MOSCOW, October 16. /TASS/. Russia may employ advanced coal-fired power generation technology to supply energy to data centers and other digital infrastructure, President Vladimir Putin said during the plenary session of Russian Energy Week, urging the government to develop proposals for such an energy supply model.

"I propose targeting local generation facilities for the digital economy and data centers - stations that use resources specialists call ‘locked,’ meaning they are costly and difficult to transport, so it is more efficient to use them at the extraction site," the president noted. "I ask the government to present proposals for organizing this model," he added.

"In particular, I ask that the use of advanced clean coal generation be explored to meet the needs of digital infrastructure, data storage and processing centers, and so on. These facilities are located directly in our coal-producing regions, providing modern jobs and diversifying the local economy," Putin emphasized.

Today, the digital economy is showing a growing demand for electricity, particularly driven by artificial intelligence tools, blockchain technologies, as well as data storage and processing facilities. According to the Russian president, global energy consumption by data centers is, by some estimates, already comparable to that of the entire heavy industry sector.

"It is evident that the areas I have just mentioned are powerful drivers of development," the Russian leader emphasized. "They largely determine the global competitiveness of nations, the efficiency of national economies, and the quality of life of their people. This means that our plans for developing the domestic fuel and energy complex must take all these trends into account - and that is exactly what we are striving to do," the head of state assured.