  We calculate energy release associated with a first order phase transition at
the center of a rotating neutron star. The results are based on precise
numerical 2-D calculations, in which both the polytropic equations of state
(EOS) as well as realistic EOS of the normal phase are used. Presented results
are obtained for a broad range of metastability of initial configuration and
size of the new superdense phase core in the final configuration. For small
radii of the superdense phase core analytical expressions for the energy
release are obtained. For a fixed "overpressure" dP (the relative excess of
central pressure of collapsing metastable star over the pressure of equilibrium
first-order phase transition) the energy release remarkably does not depend on
the stellar angular momentum and coincides with that for nonrotating stars with
the same dP. The energy release is proportional to dP^2.5 for small dPs, when
sufficiently precise brute force 2-D numerical calculations are out of
question. For higher dPs, results of 1-D calculations of energy release for
non-rotating stars are shown to reproduce, with very high precision, the exact
2-D results for rotating stars.
