Legal Support of Rational Use of Energy Resources

Abstract

The applicable laws place the highest value on the rational use of energy resources in the sphere of energy saving and energy efficiency in the Russian economic development. However, there remains legal uncertainty in terms of direct levers of the promising and rational use of energy resources. The legislator maintains “qualified silence” in this matter, the judicial practice is contradictory and ambiguous in the issues of acknowledgment of irrational behavior of energy market participants, there is no standard of proof. Along with these stagnation processes in legal support of the rational use of energy resources, the legislator piles up new constituent elements of administrative offenses and criminally punishable acts in the energy security sphere. Such instruments fail to deliver the desired results in form of the establishment of the rational use of non-renewable energy resources. Renewable energy resources in the context of legal support of the rational use are out of the question as there is no respective framework law. That’s why the author concludes that it is needed to establish a legal model of the rational and safe use of energy resources (legal compliance).