TEHRAN – Keyvan Kashefi, a board member of Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture (ICCIMA), said supplying electricity has become a major concern for large industries in the country, the ICCIMA portal reported.

Speaking in a meeting with Deputy Majlis speaker Abdolreza Mesri, Kashefi said: “Over the past few years, energy supply has become a major challenge for large industries and has greatly increased their production costs.”

This challenge has significantly affected large and high-consuming industries which are the main drivers of the country’s economy, the official added.

He noted that during the hot season’s peak consumption period such industries are faced with limited energy supply.

Kashefi, who is also the head of the Kermanshah Chamber of Commerce and Industries, criticized the fact that most of the times industries are the government’s priority for imposing energy consumption restrictions, emphasizing: "The sum of these situations has greatly increased the cost of production."

According to the official, in some cases, when industries plan to build specialized power plants to meet their needs or store enough fuel oil for the cold season, they still face some challenges, for example in the field of fuel oil, sometimes industries have to supply their fuel oil at a cost many times higher than the average prices.

The head of the Kermanshah Chamber emphasized that the energy supply of industries should be considered by the government as a major issue, especially in less developed provinces, saying: “All industrial units in Kermanshah together are not consuming as energy as some large-scale industrial units in developed provinces, and therefore a single recipe should not be applied for all industries in all provinces.”

In the past decade, constant temperature rising and the significant decrease in rainfalls across Iran have put the country in a hard situation regarding electricity supply during peak consumption periods.

In this regard, the government has been following new strategies in recent years to manage consumption and lessen the electricity losses in the national grid.

Back in September 2021, the government announced a plan for allowing major industries to build power plants and use the generated electricity during peak consumption periods.

Based on the mentioned plan, such industrial firms would fund the construction of over 10,000 megawatts (MW) capacity of new power plants to meet their own electricity needs.

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Photo: ICCIMA Board Member Keyvan Kashefi (R) and Deputy Majlis speaker Abdolreza Mesri