Warning Against Free Electricity Plan

Free or subsidized electricity cannot help tackle the array economic ills and challenges, but wrong policies will certainly lead to more complex issues, a veteran economist says.
Denouncing the government’s plan to exempt households that use electricity within a certain limit from paying their bills, Ali Shams Ardakani, who is head of the Energy Commission of Iran Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Mines, told ILNA, “So long as power pricing policies are not premised on energy economics, problems associated with [high] consumption will never be resolved.”
Elaborating the point, Shams Ardakani said, "Supplying 30 million subscribers with free power is not a scientific approach and is doomed to fail. This plan of the government has been devised by some electric engineers and not by experts in energy economics. It highly unlikely to yield positive results.”