Putin urges Russian companies to invest in alternative energy

Russian President Vladimir Putin urged energy companies Thursday to invest in alternative energy.

"We should encourage major privately-owned energy companies, which currently enjoy a favorable market environment, to invest some of their funds in the energy of the future,"
Putin said at a meeting with the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, which holds a majority in the State Duma, the parliament's lower house.

Some countries failed to invest in alternative energy sources and, as a result, faced unemployment and other problems when their coal industry declined.
Putin said in a veiled reference to the U.K.
He added that that could happen to Russia's oil industry.

Putin also commented on a bill, sponsored by State Duma deputies Sergei Baburin and Viktor Alksnis, seeking to redistribute some of the revenues of privatized companies to every Russian citizen.
Putin said that the bill was "good" but added that the government did not have enough money for that.
Instead of redistribution, the government should create opportunities for development, he said.

In their bill, Baburin and Alksnis proposed earlier this month that every Russian citizen receive 4 million rubles as compensation for allegedly unfair privatization in the 1990s.