Early in his rule, Putin joked that 2-3C of warming might be good for Russia as its people would “spend less on fur coats”.

But more recently he has warned against rising temperatures, in 2015 calling planetary heating an “issue that shall affect the future of the entire humankind”.

He has set targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and get Russia to net zero – balancing any carbon emissions it puts out with CO2 absorption through forests or other solutions – by 2060.

Fossil fuel firms seek UN carbon market cash for old gas plants

But despite these pledges, Russia’s emissions have kept on rising, and its gas-heavy electricity mix has barely changed in Putin’s 24 years in power.

Mikhail Korostikov, a Russian analyst at Climate Bonds Initiative, an organisation that promotes low-carbon investment, told Climate Home that Putin “clearly does not [care about climate change]. It’s absent from his worldview. It’s not part of his agenda.” 

Misleading baseline

Shortly before the world adopted the Paris Agreement to tackle global warming in 2015, Putin announced that Russia would cut emissions by 25-30% below 1990 levels by 2030.

Under the Paris pact, countries are supposed to increase the ambition of their climate plans every five years. So in 2020, Putin raised the goal to a reduction of at least 30%. The next year, he said Russia would reach net zero by 2060.

But the 2030 target is less ambitious than it seems. Like most Soviet countries, Russia’s emissions plummeted in the early 1990s as the  Soviet Union broke up and the economy tanked.

By the late 1990s, when Putin came to power, emissions were already 25% below their 1990 levels.

Emissions then grew slowly during Putin’s time in power, so when he made his 2015 speech, he was only promising either a 1% cut in the 15 years to 2030 or allowing for emissions to actually grow if the effects of forests sucking up carbon are included.

Climate Action Tracker (CAT), a independent scientific project that monitors governments’ climate targets and policies, called Russia’s 2030 goal “highly insufficient” as “it can easily be met with current policies”.

Russia’s emissions continued to rise until the Covid-19 pandemic, which temporarily halted growth there and in other parts of the world.

According to CAT’s analysis, Russia’s economy-wide emissions are expected to continue increasing again to 2030, “when they should be rapidly declining, especially for such a large emitter”.

It also notes that Russia’s Energy Strategy to 2035, adopted in 2021, focuses almost exclusively on promoting fossil fuel extraction, consumption and exports to the rest of the world.

Like most countries, the bulk of Russia’s emissions are from burning fossil fuels for electricity. In Putin’s time in power, Russia’s energy mix has remained largely unchanged, as has its level of emissions. 

Most electricity is generated from Russian gas with smaller amounts from the dirtiest fossil fuel  – coal – and carbon-free sources including nuclear and hydropower.

Russia’s electricity mix has barely changed in 20 years (Photos: IEA/Screenshot)

Yet while power-related emissions have stayed the same, there have been steady rises in other sectors – from transport, industry and homes.

Fossil fuel defender

United Nations carbon accounting rules mean that emissions from burning Russian-produced fossil fuels outside of Russia are not included in its official accounts.

But they do contribute to climate change. Russia is the world’s second-biggest oil and gas producer, after only the United States. Its production of both fossil fuels has risen over the last ten years.

In international climate talks, it has pushed to defend oil and gas. At Cop28, its negotiators fought successfully for what campaigners called a “dangerous loophole” that recognised gas as a “transitional fuel” which “can be used for [emission-cutting] purposes”.

And as the World Bank has sought to go greener, Russia has mounted a rearguard action, teaming up with Saudi Arabia to urge the multilateral financial institution to keep on funding fossil fuels.

China steps away from 2025 energy efficiency goal

Russia is also key to fighting climate change as guardian of a fifth of the world’s forests – home to a bigger share than any other nation.

Here, Global Forest Watch data suggests it has been relatively successful. Whereas farms have spread into forests in countries like Brazil, this has not happened in Russia – although this is likely down to an unsuitable climate rather than policy.

The major threat to Russia’s forests is climate change itself, which is driving hotter summer temperatures, drying the country out and sparking wildfires in its sparsely-populated east and north.

Geopolitical priorities

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, climate change has become even less of a priority for the Russian government, and the issue has been absent from the election campaign.

Western governments portray Putin – the longest-serving Kremlin chief since Josef Stalin – as a war criminal and a dictator. But opinion polls in Russia give him approval ratings of 85%, higher than before the invasion of Ukraine.

With military spending soaring and an international boycott of Russia’s fossil fuels over the Ukraine war hitting government revenues, the budget for state environmental programmes was cut this year.

They include the Clean Air Federal Project, which is tasked with reducing air pollution in dozens of industrial cities, and the Clean County Federal Project, which aims to eliminate toxic waste sites.

The upcoming elections will undoubtedly go in Putin’s favour, analysts say, securing him another term in office. “Putin has some competitors. None of them will get more than 1 or 2 percent” of the vote, said Korostikov of Climate Bonds Initiative, adding that global warming is not a concern for most of  the electorate.

“Nobody’s worried about climate change. People care about ecology. But when it comes to climate, people don’t care because climate change is not felt in Russia,” he said.

The post Despite Putin promises, Russia’s emissions keep rising appeared first on Climate Home News.

Arshak Makichyan, 28, became Russia’s most visible climate activist after he embarked on solo protests in Moscow’s Pushkin Square with a sign that read “Strike for climate”, inspired by Swedish youth activist Greta Thunberg.

But the risks Makichyan was taking were far greater than youth activists in Europe.

At the end of 2019, he was arrested and sentenced to six days in prison for taking part in a demonstration without permission. Individual protests are lawful in Russia but anything bigger requires police permission.

After Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February, Makichyan turned his energy into calling out Russia’s brutal war. As the crackdown against Kremlin critics intensified, he left Russia for Berlin in Germany.

Now, prosecutors in the Moscow region are accusing him of illegally becoming a Russian citizen  and are seeking to remove his sole citizenship in a case which opened on Thursday.

“They want to cancel my citizenship because of my activism,” he said in a video posted on social media, describing the case as “impossible”. “But they can’t silence me,” he added.

My name is Arshak.
I am 28 in years old. For 27 of those years, I have lived in Russia. I graduated from school, and then from the Moscow Conservatory. My wife is Russian. 1/8 pic.twitter.com/tQQ3Lv66co

— Arshak Makichyan (@MakichyanA) June 6, 2022

Makichyan was born in Armenia, a former republic of the Soviet Union, and moved to Russia with his family in the mid-1990s when he was one year old.

At the time, people who arrived in Russia from former Soviet Union countries were granted a residency permit. He became a Russian citizen in 2004.

“I thought it was impossible to cancel my citizenship because I don’t have any other,” he told Climate Home.

The case against him could leave him stateless and make it much more difficult for him to return to Russia.

In a letter outlining the charges, seen by Climate Home News, prosecutors in the city of Shatura, east of Moscow, claim that the migration services lost some of his files and therefore cannot prove his citizenship application was done according to the law.

In a second charge, they claim his request for citizenship in 2004 was made using “false” documents, namely that he allegedly did not live at the address mentioned on his application.

The letter states that an inspection of the house carried out at the start of May deemed it to be “unsuitable for living” and that no-one had ever lived there.

“These arguments are insane,” lawyer Olga Podoplelova who is representing Makichyan in court on behalf of the Russian human rights project The First Department, told Climate Home.

Podoplelova said the accusations were “unfounded” and that all due process was followed in Makichyan’s application for citizenship.

“This is such an absurd case that in a normal jurisdiction we would not face such accusations. There are indications that this case is being politically motivated,” she told Climate Home.

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A music graduate from Moscow’s Conservatory, Makichyan has dedicated his life to his activism.

His efforts to build a climate movement in Russia despite the country’s prohibitive anti-demonstration laws have led to him being detained several times.

“We were the first climate movement in Russia and we built this climate awareness from almost nothing,” he told Climate Home.

On 24 February, the day Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, Makichyan married fellow Russian activist Polina Oleinikova “for political reasons”. If one of them was arrested and sent to prison, the other would be allowed to visit, he explained. “Fuck the war” was written in red ink on the back of his white shirt.

“If you are doing activism in Russia you should be prepared to go to prison,” he said, adding: “We couldn’t even celebrate because we went straight to an anti-war protest.”

Russian activists Polina Oleinikova and Arshak Makichyan on their wedding day (Photo: Arevik Harazyan)

The next day, Oleinikova was arrested and detained for preparing an anti-war action.

In the weeks that followed, Makichyan continued to organise anti-war protests and spread information about Russian atrocities in Ukraine.

“I was trying to be useful for the country and for everyone,” he said.

He called for an embargo on all Russian fossil fuels, describing European sanctions on Russian coal and oil as “far from nearly enough” for failing to cover gas. Since the war started, the EU has paid Russia an estimated €60bn ($64bn) for fossil fuel imports.

“They are continuing to finance this terrible regime and have been doing so for years while Russia’s civil society is oppressed,” he said.

In the face of growing oppression against those daring to speak out, the couple decided to leave the country for some time and travelled to Germany.

In Berlin, Makichyan doesn’t know what the future holds. The next hearing in his case is scheduled for 27 June. His visa to Germany expires at the end of the month.

In Europe, “I don’t think I am a danger [to Putin]. I am not Navalny,” he said in reference to the Russian opposition leader who was poisoned in August 2020.

Makichyan said he believes his case is being used to “scare” and “intimidate” other non-Russian-born Russians and prevent them speaking against Putin’s war on Ukraine.

“I am very grateful to everyone who is not silent in these difficult days,” he said.

The post ‘Politically motivated’: Russian authorities seek to remove climate activist’s citizenship appeared first on Climate Home News.

Beyond these is the shock to international norms and institutions. Russia was chairing the UN Security Council – a body charged with maintaining international peace and security – even as its tanks began crushing international peace and security on the Ukrainian border.

Undermining the Russian war machine by eliminating fossil fuel imports is a central focus of governments opposed to the Putin regime. To build security against the Putins of this world on an ongoing basis, they also need to reinforce the legitimacy of the multilateral world order.

This includes restoring confidence and momentum in the UN climate negotiations, a process in which Putin’s Russia has invested nothing but cynicism. Success in the UN climate process, given the growing links between climate impacts and conflict, is essential for global security.

G7 pushes Japan to speed up clean energy transition at home and abroad

Governments are not doing enough to limit global warming to the Paris Agreement targets. National emission-cutting plans are too shallow, their delivery highly uncertain. Many highlight targets for 2050, 2060 or even 2070, while giving little detail on decarbonising this decade, which the science shows to be essential.

Self-professed climate leaders are not immune: the EU’s nationally determined contribution (NDC), its formal commitment to other governments made through the UN climate convention, pledges to cut emissions by 55% (from 1990 levels) by 2030 – a target which the Climate Action Tracker calculates should be around 62%. 

Russia’s invasion has spurred many governments, particularly in Europe, to ramp up their decarbonisation plans for this decade. They are not calling it “decarbonisation” – the headline is “energy security” – but in most cases the effect will be the same. Making energy use more efficient, speeding the build-out of renewables and battery storage, accelerating a transition to electric vehicles, mandating and supporting heat pump installation… all of these ideas are being enacted as responses to Russian aggression, but could have been taken from any recent blueprint for climate change mitigation. True, some governments are also building gas infrastructure; but speeding up the clean energy transition will shorten the working lifetime of any new wells and LNG import terminals.

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The European Commission has proposed increasing the bloc’s renewable energy target for 2030 from 40% to 45%. The amount of emissions eliminated will depend on the precise mix of fossil fuels that is replaced, but will certainly be a few percentage points. The Commission also wants to increase the 2030 energy efficiency improvement target too, from 9% to 13% – logically, another few percent. Other measures taken by the EU or its member states offer the promise of cutting emissions; could the 62% figure, or even better, be within reach?. 

For governments that profess to care about both climate change and the multilateral world order, the obvious next step is to calculate the impact their new energy security plans will have on emissions, and publish them as formal emission-cutting targets in upgraded NDCs ahead of this year’s UN climate summit in Egypt in November.

This would set down a strong marker of commitment to climate action and international cooperation in one fell swoop. The 2021 UN climate summit in Glasgow ended with governments calling on each other to “revisit and strengthen” their commitments to 2030: this would start the ball rolling. It would throw down a gauntlet to countries politically allied on the Ukraine crisis, whether in NATO like the US and Canada or outside it like fellow G20 members Japan and Australia. It would challenge them to show they have internalised that when rogue fossil fuelled dictators are the problem, cooperative climate action has to be part of the solution.

Analysis: Russian climate action and research is collateral damage in Putin’s war on Ukraine

Meanwhile for the US, contributing its fair share of international climate finance would help the poorest nations decarbonise and build their security, acting as both an economic and diplomatic bulwark against Russia. 

Just four days after Putin’s tanks rolled across the border, all governments – including, weirdly, his – approved the Working Group Two summary report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In doing so they agreed that “…any further delay in concerted anticipatory global action… will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.”

Getting through the window before it closes not only means nations decarbonising faster, it entails building confidence between nations that there is multilateral commitment to the UN convention, the Paris Agreement and emission cuts based on science and equity. NDC upgrades on the back of anti-Putin clean energy commitments offer the way forward. Do the sums, publish the NDCs; combat climate change, as well as the Kremlin. 

Richard Black is senior associate at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) and an honorary research fellow at the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London.

The post Europe should use its Putin-proofing energy plans to reinvigorate climate action appeared first on Climate Home News.

Government officials are compiling a database, using open source information and satellite images, of environmental damages in the wake of Russian attacks.

They intend to prosecute the Kremlin under international law and seek reparations.

“Russia has to pay for all that they have done,” Iryna Stavchuk, Ukraine’s deputy minister for energy and environment, told Climate Home News. “The ultimate goal is that they actually pay for the recovery.” 

Stavchuk is leading efforts to document the toll of the war on natural resources and ecosystems, in partnership with international and Ukrainian organisations.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, the State Ecological Inspectorate of Ukraine has recorded 231 cases of environmental damage.

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“There is a lot of local chemical and hazardous pollution on the ground from all the missile attacks and bombings,” said Stavchuk.

Inspectors are travelling to sites struck by Russian missiles and bombs to collect soil samples and to monitor pollution levels, where it is safe to do so. They do not have access to some of the hardest hit areas.

Crimes related to environmental damage have rarely been prosecuted under international law, giving Ukraine few precedents to build on. One exception is a case brought by Kuwait against Iraq, for its invasion and occupation of the country in 1990-91.

Fires in Chernihiv, Ukraine, including at a warehouse and facility storing fuel products, on 21 March 2022. (Credit: Maxar)

When the Gulf War ended, the UN created a compensation commission to deal with Kuwaiti claims arising from Iraq’s invasion. The commission found that Iraq was liable under international law for losses and damages, including environmental damages and the depletion of natural resources. Kuwait was awarded $52.4 billion in compensation for 1.5 million of the 2.7 million claims it brought. 

“The UN Security Council decided that they would proceed with that case,” said Stavchuk. “It’s actually a problematic case for us because Russia [sits] on the Security Council.”

She added: “We understand that we will have to come up with a completely new legal [framework] on environmental  crimes because most of the documents within the UN system were designed for peacetime.”

Environmental inspectors take samples following an explosion on the Samara-Western oil pipeline, in the village of Rudnya, Ukraine. (Photo: State Ecological Inspectorate Ukraine/Facebook)

Nonprofits are helping to gather evidence of the environmental impacts and the long-term risks they pose to Ukraine and other countries. 

The environmental damage caused by Russia’s invasion is extensive and already affecting people’s health and safety, Yevheniia Zasiadko, head of climate at the Ukrainian non-profit EcoAction, told Climate Home News.

EcoAction has been using reports on social media channels, such as Telegram, to monitor incidents across the country. “But it’s impossible to see the full picture,” said Zasiadko.

Incidents documented by EcoAction include Russian bombing of oil depots, which increased air pollution over residential areas in Kyiv, explosions around pipelines, which caused oil spills and contaminated water sources, and a Russian strike against a nitrogen tank which dispersed four tonnes of nitric acid, she said.

There have also been attacks around nuclear reactors, sparking forest wildfires and posing a serious risk to surrounding areas of radioactive release.

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On 2 March Russian shelling hit the largest poultry farm in Europe, Chornobayevskaya, killing almost five million chickens. “It is unrealistic to dispose of them,” said Zasiadko, raising serious concerns about bacterial contamination. 

Pax, a peace organisation based in the Netherlands, has been using satellite images to verify locations and incidents mentioned on social media channels. The organisation started monitoring the environmental damages caused by conflict during the Syrian War.

“In Ukraine, we want to document that there are direct risks for civilians from environmental damage, in particular in urban areas and around industrial sites,” Wim Zwijnenburg, who is leading the work at Pax, told Climate Home News. 

A fire at a fuel tanker farm in Kalynivka, Ukraine, after it was hit by Russian cruise missiles on 25 March 2022. (Credit: Maxar)

Russia has targeted industrial waste facilities, which has led to wastewater leaking into rivers and lakes, creating a public health risk and preventing civilians from accessing clean drinking water, said Zwijnenburg. When Russian missiles struck a fuel tanker farm in Kalynivka, a farming village 40km south of Kyiv, it sparked a big fire which increased air pollution for communities living downwind.

“Oil and wastewater could pose additional risks to local surface and groundwater if it gets out of the facility,” said Zwijnenburg. 

The database also helps Ukrainian authorities prioritise their emergency response to incidents and, once the conflict ends, to direct rehabilitation and clean-up efforts, he said.

The post Ukraine builds legal case against Russia for environmental damage appeared first on Climate Home News.

A ministerial report obtained by Russian newspaper Kommersant said its plans to reduce national net emissions 80% between 1990 and 2050 would not now be achieved.

Ryan Wilson, Russia analyst with Climate Analytics, told Climate Home that this target is unambitious and relies mainly on accounting tricks rather than real emissions reductions and would largely be unaffected by sanctions.

Emissions reductions on 1990 levels are easier for Russia to achieve because the Russian economy, and therefore emissions, collapsed shortly after 1990. Russia’s long-term climate strategy plans for recorded emissions to continue to rise until 2030 before declining slowly.

Climate Action Tracker ranks Russia’s climate ambition and action as “critically insufficient”.

Of the emissions reductions which are planned, Wilson said “the vast majority come from very high projected removals from the forestry sector. These removals would not by affected by sanctions”.

Under Russia’s approved “intensive” emissions reduction scenario, between 2019 and 2030, increased “removals” would take away 0.66bn tons of Co2 a year while emisisons reductions would account for 0.29bn tons.

Russia plans to change how it counts emissions from forestry. Global guidelines on carbon accounting state that only emissions and emissions reductions from "managed forests", which are subject to human intervention, should be counted.

But Russia plans to categorise all its forests as "managed forests" and claim credit for the carbon they absorb as trees grow. Around 20% of the world's forest is in Russia.

Russian renewable investors have warned that, beacuse of sanctions, they are unlikely to build their projects as quickly as planned and have asked the Russian government not to fine them for the delay.

‘Betrayal’: US approves just $1bn climate finance for developing countries in 2022

Wilson said renewables projects may be delayed but "Russian renewable energy targets are very modest and were already not on track to be met".

One reason Russian renewables have been slow to develop is that rules require a lot of the equipment to be made in Russia, he said.

The revenues of Russian oil and gas companies are likely to be hurt by boycotts. The European Union plans to reduce its use of Russian gas by two-thirds in a year and stop using Russian fossil fuels by 2027.

In response to this falling income, the Russian government is reportedly considering lowering taxes on Russian fossil fuel firms, relaxing fuel standards and allowing them to sell alcohol at petrol stations.

This article was amended on 19/3/22 to express Russia's 2050 target using a 1990 baseline rather than a 2019 baseline. The 1990 baseline is more widely used by the Russian government. Context on that 1990 baseline was also added.

The post Russia claims sanctions will stop it meeting climate targets appeared first on Climate Home News.

As reports came in of Russian forces shelling civilian targets in Ukraine on Tuesday, the European Commission unveiled a strategy to defund Vladimir Putin’s regime through a key trading relationship.

More than 40% of gas supplies to the EU come from Russia, with central and eastern member states most heavily reliant. Under the plan, named REPowerEU, officials claimed the bloc could cut the volume by two thirds in a year – but stopped short of calling for a ban.

Commission vice president Frans Timmermans said: “We have been too dependent on Russia for our energy needs. It is not a free market if there is a state actor looking to manipulate it…

“The answer lies in renewable energy and diversification of supply,” he said. “Renewables give us the freedom to choose an energy source that is clean, cheap, reliable and ours.”

REPowerEU outlines measures to speed up approval of wind power projects, roll out rooftop solar panels, accelerate the installation of heat pumps, and increase production of biomethane and green hydrogen.

Vanessa Nakate confronts rich world’s ministers over loss and damage

EU energy commissioner Kadri Simson said spending could be funded by windfall taxes on energy firms’ profits and by the revenues member states raise from selling pollution permits under the emissions trading system (ETS).

The EU plan would cut demand for Russian gas by twice as much as the International Energy Agency (IEA) recommended last week and Timmermans said it would be “bloody hard” but “it’s possible”.

Refinitiv analyst Yan Qin told Climate Home: “The crisis is accelerating the energy transition to divert away from fossil fuels.”

As well as replacing gas with renewables, the EU aims to replace Russian gas with gas from other countries, brought in on ships or through pipelines. The most likely suppliers include the US, Algeria, Qatar and Azerbaijan.

Germany has struck a deal to build its first LNG terminal for importing gas, which is expected to start operations in 2024 at the earliest.

It did not go as far as some wanted. Ahead of the announcement on Monday, European Climate Foundation chief Laurence Tubiana tweeted in favour of “full energy sanctions”. Acknowledging that this would put pressure on EU households and economies, she argued that citizens were ready to support tough choices.

With partial sanctions, Tubiana said, “we are straining our economies while sending President Putin $700m in blood money every single day”.

Around the world, women are putting their lives on the line to defend the climate

Climate campaigners welcomed the increased ambition for reducing gas consumption but were less keen on building more gas import infrastructure.

Global Witness gas campaigner Tara Connolly said the renewables and renovation plans “could be the beginnings of the radical change the EU urgently needs”. But, she added, new gas terminals would “lock the EU into further dependence on expensive, climate-wrecking fossil gas”.

It remains to be seen whether member states are willing to implement the proposed measures, said Raphael Hanoteaux, senior policy advisor on gas transition politics at E3G, told Climate Home. Heads of state are due to meet in Versailles on Thursday and Friday. “That’s where it could be translated into real political action,” he said.

“The headline is great but all the rest is lacking. We don’t have many details,” said Hanoteaux.

Europe’s existing LNG terminals in brown, proposed ones in yellow and under construction ones in red (Source: Global Energy Monitor)

The IEA has warned that importing more non-Russian gas would be expensive as the EU competes with other buyers for a limited amount of global supply. Prices were already soaring before the Russian invasion of Ukraine created further uncertainty.

The European Commission said that its renewable energy directive should be enforced by member states to make it easier for projects to get a permit.

“We can not talk about renewables revolution if getting a permit to build a wind park takes seven years,” Simson said. “It is time to treat these projects as being in the overriding public interest, because they are.”

Across Europe, wind power projects have been opposed by local citizens worried about their view or by conservationists concerned about their impact on wildlife.

The Commission aims to speed up programmes to place solar panels on rooftops and install heat pumps to replace gas heating systems. Timmermans described both these measures as “low-hanging fruit”.

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In the longer term, the Commission said that it wants the EU to produce more biogas from farm and food waste, and renewable hydrogen. This will have a minimal impact in the short term, its own analysis shows.

European citizens will be asked to turn their heating down. If every household and office turned its thermostat down by 1C, the bloc could save 10 billion cubic metres of gas a year.

Despite these measures, energy prices are expected to rise for consumers and businesses.

Simson said the EU ETS, which some governments have blamed for high prices, generates money that member states could use to soften the blow.

The post Swap Russian gas for renewables, EU tells member states appeared first on Climate Home News.

Speaking from the environment ministry’s basement bomb shelter in Kyiv, Roman Shakhmatenko told the Nairobi-based meeting: “For decades, a lot of leaders… have been using limitless and unstoppable fossil fuels.”

“We’ve ignored the issue that it’s influencing climate change. We’ve ignored that it’s influencing our future, our global future,” he added.

“Moreover,” he said, “this ignorance brought [the] rise of mad, of crazy dictators with a lot of money to kill people and destroy [the] environment.”

He sighed deeply before continuing: “With this in mind, I urge you please take joint action [to] withdraw all of the assets, all of the shares from Russian fossil fuel companies… because they’re using this money to kill people.”

Ukraine’s deputy environment minister addressing the UN Environment Assembly.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, western oil and gas majors have announced plans to divest from Russian oil and gas interests. The strength of their commitments varies.

Shell and Equinor have said they will end their joint ventures with Gazprom, BP has said it will exit its 20% stake in Rosneft, ExxonMobil has started to wind down operations and exit its far-eastern Russian oil and gas field and Eni has said it intends to sell its 50% stake in a gas pipeline linking Russia to Turkey.

French major Total Energies has only said it will halt new investments, not ditch its 19% stake in Novatek, which includes development of LNG in the Arctic.

Shell, Equinor and BP are minority stakeholders so operations will continue without them. Exxon is the majority shareholder and operator of the Sakhalin 1 oil and gas field.

Asked whether this would disrupt Russian oil and gas production, the energy lead for Ukrainian environmental NGO Ecoaction Kostiantyn Krynytsky told Climate Home it was the “million dollar question”.

“I think it can work in a package,” he said, with sanctions on Russian assets. He added that just a minor reduction in production would not be enough though, as the current war was financed by “business as usual” after Russia’s 2014 invasion of the Ukrainian region of Crimea.

Under attack: the Ukrainian climate scientist fighting for survival

Western governments are also targetting Russian fossil fuels. In 2020, Europe imported around 175 billion cubic metres of gas a year from Gazprom, bankrolling the Russian state.

Yesterday, European Commission president Ursula Von Der Leyen said the EU was building new liquified natural gas terminals to import gas by ship from countries other than Russia. Europe’s biggest LNG suppliers in 2020 were Qatar, Nigeria, Russia and the USA.

In the long run, she said investment in renewables would make the EU “truly independent” because “every kilowatt-hour of electricity Europe generates from solar, wind, hydropower or biomass reduces our dependency on Russian gas and other energy sources” and that “means less money for the Kremlin’s war chest”.

Comment: An energy investment treaty has been holding Nord Stream 2 hostage

The Commission is hastily rewriting its gas security strategy to emphasise replacing Russian supplies from alternative sources. The draft proposal would also require member states to fill gas storage ahead of next winter and speed up permitting for new wind and solar farms.

A Bruegel analysis found it was possible for Europe to get off Russian gas without increasing coal or oil use.

In Europe, Russia’s biggest customer for gas is Germany. Berlin is drawing up plans to reduce the country’s use of Russian gas, mainly through green measures. Finance minister Christian Lindner has labelled renewables “freedom energy”.

In the short term, the German government plans to target LNG from non-Russian countries, roll out heat pumps and non-gas district heating and ramp up renewables. This will require training programmes for heat pump installers as well as cash for investment.

Five takeaways from the UN’s 2022 climate impacts report

It may also postpone closures of coal-fired power stations, with Green economy minister Robert Habeck saying energy security comes before climate action right now. But there is no indication that the government would abandon its plans to phase out coal-fired power by 2030.

Nuclear plant closures are unlikely to be postponed, Germanwatch analyst David Ryfisch told Climate Home, as the decommissioning process has started and there are doubts as to whether it can safely be reversed.

In the long term, Germany has brought forward its 100% renewable electricity target from “well before 2040” to 2035. It wants 80% renewables electricity by 2030.

While there is strong demand for gas from Asia, it would not be easy for Russia to reroute sales as its gas is mainly produced in western Siberia and linked to Europe by pipelines.

Operational gas pipelines are in brown. Russia’s gas fields are mainly in western Siberia.

On Wednesday, Russian oil was trading at a discount of more than $18 a barrel below the market rate, with buyers wary of reputational or legal risk.

The Center for Strategic and International (CSIS) energy researcher Ben Cahill said that Asia could not easily replace European markets for oil either. Around 60% of Russia’s oil exports go to OECD Europe while 20% go to China.

Cahill told the CSIS podcast: “It’s a significant exporter to both markets. It’s the critical supplier to Europe. So can they replace Europe as a customer for crude oil products? No they can’t”.

“This is the end of Russia as an energy superpower”, added Cahill’s colleague Nikos Tsafos.

The post Ukrainian official calls for Russian fossil fuel boycott at UN Environment Assembly appeared first on Climate Home News.

As Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine and explosions of military artillery resonated across the capital Kyiv on Thursday, “we woke up in a different world,” she told Climate Home News from her flat in the south of the city.

A senior scientist of applied climatology who introduced climate models to Ukraine, Krakovska was leading an 11-strong delegation in the negotiations to approve the “summary for policymakers” that accompanies the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on climate impacts.

This was the first time Ukraine was represented by such a large delegation, allowing experts to bring their regional perspective from Europe’s largest country (aside from Asia-straddling Russia). “Before, I was alone,” Krakovska said.

As Russian troops advanced towards the capital, the survival of Ukraine as a sovereign state and the completion of the IPCC report both became critical for Krakovska.

“As long as we have internet and no bombs over our head, we will continue to work,” she recalled telling the plenary of the IPCC meeting on Thursday. But the fighting intensified, and when rockets hit the city, the delegation was forced to withdraw from the discussions.

“It is not possible to make science when you are under attack,” she said. “I’m sad that instead of presenting key findings of this report in Ukraine, we need to fight for the existence of our country.”

IPCC: Five takeaways from the UN’s 2022 climate impacts report

A mother of four, Krakovska was born in Kyiv and has decided to stay in the city with her family.

A war in Europe in 2022 “is not acceptable” but “we don’t panic, we stay strong,” she said, visibly moved during a Zoom interview.

Krakovska says there is “a very direct connection” between climate change and the war. “Russia has a lot of money from fossil fuels and these fossil fuels make this war possible.”

Issues of water scarcity in eastern and southern Ukraine are also likely to have played a role, she said. Access to water supplies in the Russian-occupied Crimea became a major issue and led to increased concerns of Russian military threats following widespread drought in 2018, 2019 and 2020.

Krakovska said that 10 of the last 12 years had seen below normal precipitation levels. In 2020, water levels in Ukraine’s rivers and reservoirs hit their lowest levels since record began in 1885.

In the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, where Russian-backed separatist forces have been in conflict with the Ukrainian military since 2014, water woes were exacerbated by shelling and damage to infrastructure.

The IPCC report published Monday states that droughts induced by higher levels of global warming, “by increasing vulnerability, will increasingly affect violent intrastate conflict”.

For Krakovska, Russia’s war on Ukraine shows this can become a cross-border issue.

Revealed: How rich and at-risk nations fought over science of climate impacts

Krakovska knows Russia well. She was born under the Soviet Union, studied meteorology in Saint Petersburg and went on several expeditions to study cloud modelling across Russia.

She joined the Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Institute, where she now heads the applied climatology laboratory, in September 1991, days after Ukraine’s declared its independence from the Soviet Union.

Krakovska first experienced signs of climate change on a trip to the Arctic in October 1991, when mild temperatures meant that the sea still hadn’t frozen as was usual for the time of year.

In the late 1990s, she was one of the first Ukrainian women to travel to Antarctica on a scientific expedition.

A visit to the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany, took her research in a new direction. There, she met with a group of scientists working on regional climate modelling.

She soon started to work on projections for Ukraine, which have since been used to plan adaptation measures across the country.

Svitlana Krakovska at the Ukrainian Akademik Vernadsky station on Galindez Island in 1997 (Photo: Svitlana Krakovska )

Since the invasion started, Krakovska has received dozens of messages of support from the scientific community across the world.

Russian delegate Oleg Anisimov apologised for his country’s invasion of Ukraine during the IPCC approval session’s closing plenary on Sunday – at risk of incurring the wrath of his government.

“The courage of the delegation of Ukraine, which continued to contribute to our deliberations [on Thursday] is remarkable. Science has no borders,” tweeted Climatologist Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, of the Belgian delegation.

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But the future of Ukraine and its scientific community are uncertain. Last month, on the anniversary of the 2014 revolution that severed Ukraine’s ties to Russia, Ukrainian scientists wrote in Nature that national science spending remained low, government funding was used inefficiently and low salaries discouraged students from embarking on research careers.

Even that small budget is likely to be redirected to defence – and Krakovska is not complaining.

“We are the poorest country in Europe and we’re really poor scientists if I’m honest,” said Krakovska. “But now I’m really happy that they use this finance to make our army stronger.”

The war is a direct threat to Ukrainian research institutions. In Crimea, those that were previously run by the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine were transferred to Russian control. Since 2014, the conflict in the east has led 18 universities to relocate to other parts of the country, with many researchers losing their homes and laboratories.

“I hope that we survive and continue to do science as Ukrainian scientists in an independent Ukraine,” Krakovska said.

As our conversation came to a close, she realised she hadn’t checked her phone for warnings to get to a shelter. “I hope that my voice will make a difference,” she added.

The post Under attack: the Ukrainian climate scientist fighting for survival appeared first on Climate Home News.

The Russian military entered parts of eastern Ukraine on Tuesday and then advanced into the rest of the country and towards its capital Kyiv on Thursday.

Svitlana Krakovsa is a meteorologist who was one of the first Ukranian women to study Antarctica in the late 1990s.

Over the last two weeks, she has joined scientific colleagues meeting with government representatives to approve the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) upcoming report on climate adaptation and its limits.

Due to Covid-19, these discussions have been held online, which Krakovsa joined from Kyiv, a city which has been hit by rockets in the last two days as Russian troops advance towards it.

She told Climate Home News that she and other Ukrainian scientists left the IPCC’s approval meeting early. “We need to think about [the] safety of our families and it is not possible to concentrate on the wording of the summary for policymakers under attack and bombing”.

US seeks to remove ‘losses and damages’ from scientific report on climate impacts

Others have decided to flee the city to safety. Olha Boiko is a regional co-ordinator for Climate Action Network and was based in Kyiv. At 5am yesterday, explosions woke her as Russia moved into the country.

She and her partner quickly packed and got a train out of the city. “It was very hard,” she said. The everyday reality of a few days prior had faded. “No-one even checked the tickets”.

They arrived in a city in the west of Ukraine to decide what to do next. “When you need to pack and leave in a few hours, all working meetings go on hold. When you don’t know if you will make it to Monday, planning a conference in June is also out of the question,” she told Climate Home. “The war is not limited by politicians and army. It touches all of us.”

Boiko said she was trying to remain in contact with her colleagues abroad and continue her work. “But it’s sure hard as our friends and colleagues spend nights in the bomb shelters. We might spend the night in a shelter too tonight, nobody knows.”

Comment: An energy investment treaty has been holding Nord Stream 2 hostage

Natalia Gozak is the director of environmental NGO Eco Action. She was also woken up by explosions in Kyiv in the early hours of Thursday. At midday, she got in her car and drove west.

“We were not alone,” she said. The traffic meant that a journey that normally took two hours took more than eight. After staying with friends, she got back in the car and drove another eight hours towards the town of Lviv before speaking to Climate Home from the car.

“We feel frustrated and shocked because this is real madness,” she said. But Ukrainians are patriotic and confident in their armed forces, she added.

Gozak hopes Lviv will be safe or she will have to leave the country. The invasion’s impact on her work was “disappointing”, she said. Eco Action has spent years on climate dialogue and “in just a few days, all this work looks like it has disappeared because of the priority of defending the country”.

She is confident Ukraine will eventually push back the Russian invaders. If that takes years, she said climate work in the country may have to start again from scratch. And Eco Action could shift its attention to humanitarian or social priorities.

Activists raise inclusivity concerns for Cop27 as Egypt hikes hotel prices

One senior staff member at an energy company, who is not authorised to talk to the media, has been working to promote green manufacturing in Ukraine.

But the private investments on which Ukraine depends for its energy transition are drying up. Investors are “afraid to invest in Ukraine,” he told Climate Home on Wednesday. Recent conversation with officials in London, Berlin, Brussels and Washington about securing export credit guarantees for green projects are “not relevant now at all unfortunately,”he said.

The Ukrainian government released a climate plan in August which aimed to grow the country’s economy without increasing its emissions.

It planned a “just transition” from coal to renewables with spending on insulating Ukraine’s draughty apartment blocks.

But the government’s future and its power to deliver the plan is now under severe threat. A Ukrainian parliamentary decree allows all government spending to be re-allocated to the military following the Russian invasion.

The post Invasion tears Ukraine’s climate community away from life’s work appeared first on Climate Home News.

But why has the German government delayed this decision for so long? And why did Scholz merely halt the certification rather than cancelling it?

The words of German environment minister Svenja Schulze from last February give a clue. “We also run the risk of ending up in international arbitration courts with compensation claims if we stop the project,” she said.

Her warning added to a growing list of ministers admitting that they feared investor-state-dispute settlement (ISDS) claims under the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT), of which Germany is one of 53 members.

The ECT is a binding multilateral agreement, established in the 1990s, which protects foreign investments in economic activities related to nuclear energy, fossil fuels and electricity without distinguishing between the energy sources used to produce electricity.

It has been used by energy companies to sue governments whose policies damage their investments, whether fossil fuel based or renewables.

Activists raise inclusivity concerns for Cop27 as Egypt hikes hotel prices

In 2019, the multinational consortium behind Nord Stream 2 used the treaty to sue the EU over the implementation the implementation of measures to separate energy supply and generation from transmission included in the 2019 revised EU gas directive.

Lobbyists from one of the companies behind the pipeline, Shell, pushed for the case to be against Germany rather than the EU – which the European Commission was happy to support.

Other ECT cases against Germany include Swedish company Vattenfall asking for €1.4 billion ($1.5bn) in compensation over measures to protect water from coal power plants’ pollution and €4.7bn ($5.2bn) over nuclear power phase-outs.

Germany and some other EU member states are trying to reform and improve the ECT. They have empowered the European Commission to argue on their behalf in ongoing modernisation talks.

But the European Commision’s proposed changes will not affect existing fossil fuel investments and, similarly to the EU taxonomy, will end protection for new coal and oil but keep protection for nuclear and most gas-fired power plants.

They are now proposing a “flexibility mechanism”, where countries decide which energy sources they want to protect.

Amazon indigenous community restores giant freshwater fish and thrives

The adoption of this mechanism means the European Commission’s proposal would apply in EU countries. In other words, most gas-fired power plants and the Nord Stream 2 pipeline will be protected until 2040 in EU member states.

The next round of negotiations begins next week behind closed doors. France has previously looked into the legal implications of the EU collectively leaving the treaty.

But, President Emmanuel Macron has not placed the ECT in his priorities for France’s time as chair of the European Council. We could soon be paying the price for that omission.

Yamina Saheb used to head the Energy Charter Treaty’s energy efficiency unit and is now an energy policy analyst at the OpenExp think tank.

This article was amended after publication to clarify that, under the European Commission’s proposal, most gas-fired power plants and the Nord Stream 2 pipeline will be protected until 2040 rather than “forever”, as previously stated.

The post An energy investment treaty has been holding Nord Stream 2 hostage appeared first on Climate Home News.

Russia, in particular, has potential to become a pivotal stakeholder of global climate action. The fourth largest carbon emitter, Russia is also home to 20% of the world’s forest cover, and stores about half of the northern hemisphere’s terrestrial carbon.

Russia’s status as a major hydrocarbon exporter is often entangled with geopolitical tensions and the overall negative and unnuanced image that prevails internationally, leading to the assumption that Russia is unwilling to cooperate on climate change.

Such an unsophisticated portrayal may limit the potential of global climate action. Cop26 can provide the necessary momentum, but truly constructive engagement requires a reconceptualisation of Russia as a climate actor.

Local projects to restore and protect ecosystems have been expanding across the country. Sustainable living and the notion of maximising ecological value are expanding to urban areas through projects such as the Kazan Eco District, or Moscow’s Green River project.

This reflects the fact that environmental pollution was identified by Russians as the greatest threat facing humanity.

To close 1.5C gap, countries face call for another round of climate pledges by 2023

Russian businesses are increasingly conscious of their responsibilities to contribute to the global climate agenda, and they know the risks they face by failing to adapt to the growing global demand for cleaner products, highlighted by the EU’s recent announcement about carbon taxes on imports.

Energy companies have been exploring emission-reducing mechanisms and have emphasised ecological safety in their mission statements, and carbon offsetting schemes are increasingly popular.

Major private initiatives include a memorandum of cooperation between the NLMK Group, a global steel company, and Gazprom Neft, one of Russia’s largest oil companies, pledging to reduce their climate impact by jointly developing projects for cutting emissions, including the development of technologies for the use of hydrogen in steelmaking.

In finance, the VTB Group launched a new business line, with financial services dedicated to, among other things, deploying low-carbon technologies and undertaking transactions in emissions trading systems.

Important developments have been happening in regions. Russia aims to make the fossil-fuel-rich Pacific island of Sakhalin carbon neutral by 2025 and has adopted a roadmap, which envisions the introduction of low-carbon technologies, mandatory emissions reporting and verification, carbon quotas and a carbon trading system, and green finance mechanisms.

Other regions will follow this model, with Kaliningrad next in line. Furthermore, the region of Murmansk will become a testing ground for “green” technologies in a bid to achieve carbon neutrality, according to an agreement signed by Rusnano and regional authorities. The project is expected to generate 12,000 tons of “green” hydrogen fuel per year by 2025.

China reaffirms existing climate targets in submission to UN ahead of Cop26

Recently, president Vladimir Putin announced that the upcoming decarbonisation strategy will see Russia reach carbon neutrality by 2060. Although details are yet to be revealed, hydrogen is likely to play a major role: hydrogen development concepts envision the creation of four hydrogen clusters by 2024, aiming for a 20-25% share of the global market by 2035, and use of hydrogen fuel in transport.

This year, the Russian Parliament (State Duma) approved a bill requiring highly polluting companies to report their greenhouse gas emissions, while the approval of a green taxonomy creates strict standards for issuing green bonds.

On an international level, Russia began supporting developing countries, including through debt write-offs, the ‘debt for development’ initiative, and Research & Development cooperation on climate change. Furthermore, it has voluntarily contributed funding for global climate initiatives and institutions, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

These developments demonstrate a widespread recognition that the status quo is no longer an option.

The first step for global leaders is to acknowledge the openness of Russian stakeholders on governmental, regional, business, and grassroots levels and to develop tools for cooperating , including through knowledge-sharing and technological and science cooperation, especially in areas like hydrogen production, where Russia is taking a leading position.

While Russia is a major exporter of hydrocarbons and a large greenhouse gas emitter, treating it as a spoiler on climate change might result in missing the opportunity to get Russia to own the climate agenda, build on its recent progress, and work with the international community to ensure a rapid and just transition globally.

Failing to take Russia’s climate initiatives seriously would be to the detriment of the entire climate movement.

Alina Averchenkova is a policy fellow at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment; Alexander Ginzburg is CEO of the Development and Environment Foundation; Kamila Godzinska is a researcher at E3G and Konstantin Sukhoverkhov is programme coordinator at the Russian International Affairs Council.

The post Treating Russia as a climate change spoiler undermines global action appeared first on Climate Home News.

Europe’s gas storage tanks are low because a lot of gas was used to heat homes in an especially cold winter and spring. Russia did not increase gas supplies over the summer to refill the tanks.

This low supply of gas, coupled with rising demand from Asia, has pushed up the price of gas and therefore the price of electricity across Europe.

On 7 September, gas was trading at €52/MWh at Europe’s main benchmark hub, more than triple the price at the same time last year. Electricity prices have topped €100/MWh in many markets.

This has left many Europeans worried about whether they will be able to afford to heat their homes this winter.

While some commentators have blamed climate policy for rising energy costs, most experts say the crisis reinforces the case for switching to clean energy and reducing reliance on a volatile commodity.

After a mild start to last winter, European temperatures plummeted in January 2021. Parts of central Spain saw their heaviest snowfall in decades.

It has been a historic snowstorm #filomena in #Madrid with massive traffic disruption. Accumulations between 20cm-40cm (and more with drifted snow) were recorded in the city ,the greatest since January 1952. Record still stands in November 1904 with 50cm-100cm. #Filomenamadrid pic.twitter.com/9qRhrLXKsd

— Extreme Temperatures Around The World (@extremetemps) January 9, 2021

This cold weather continued until late spring, leading Europeans to use more gas to heat their homes and draining Europe’s gas storage tanks to unusually low levels.

Gas storage tanks are usually filled up over the summer. But Russia refused to send more gas than it was legally obliged to. Russian exports to Europe were down from their pre-pandemic 2019 level.

This is partly because Russian gas supplies were low too after a similarly harsh winter.

Geopolitical analysts have also suggested that Russia wanted to pressure Germany to approve the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline against fierce opposition from the US and Ukraine.

The NordStream 2 gas pipeline bypasses Ukraine, costing them money. (Photo: Samuel Bailey/WikiCommons)

Europe’s situation was made worse by a lack of alternatives to Russian gas.

As well as moved through pipelines, gas can be liquified and transported on ships around the world. Known as LNG, this product can go wherever prices are higher – which at present is Asia.

Seven countries join US and EU in methane reduction pledge

In a number of European countries, sceptics of climate policy have argued the crisis is the result of politicians prioritising sustainability over affordability and security of supply.

For example, the Daily Mail newspaper gave columnist Matt Ridley a two-page spread to rail at the “eco self-harm” of the UK’s net zero target and “unreliable” wind power.

The Daily Mail has, predictably, cleared its pages today for a climate sceptic.

Funny, though, that it doesn't find space to mention the author has made £££ from coal mining on his land.

Or – talking of "devastating audits" – remind readers he was chair of, er, Northern Rock pic.twitter.com/6NcTFghcYQ

— Leo Hickman (@LeoHickman) September 21, 2021

A dip in the supply of wind power in recent weeks due to weak wind speeds did contribute to the rising electricity price, according to the International Energy Agency, but were not the main driver.

“Recent increases in global natural gas prices are the result of multiple factors, and it is inaccurate and misleading to lay the responsibility at the door of the clean energy transition,” said IEA chief Fatih Birol in a statement.

Sarah Brown, an electricity analyst at think-tank Ember, said wind availability had only a “very marginal” effect on the electricity price. “Blaming low wind is clutching at straws,” she said.

A rising carbon price on the EU market is another factor, but again it is secondary to the effect of gas shortages. More coal is likely to be burned this winter, increasing demand for carbon allowances to cover these extra emissions.

In August 2021, according to Ember analysis, carbon costs were 20% of the total cost of gas generation.

Data from before the recent rise in the gas and carbon price shows that carbon costs are only 20% of the total gas generation costs (Sarah Brown/Ember)

Simone Tagliapietra and Georg Zachmann of the Bruegel Institute argue that investment in renewables is the solution to energy price volatility.

They write: “Investments in fossil assets aren’t sustainable long-term. But governments have not yet committed clearly enough to a low-carbon future.”

“So,” they add, “the energy supply-demand balance in the EU will be volatile depending on how quickly fossil fuels are phased out and green energy is phased in.”

President Xi declares end to Chinese support for new coal power abroad

Some politicans have accepted this. Spain’s ecological transition minister Teresa Ribera blamed fossil fuels and said the direction of structural reform to support clean energy must stay the same, with temporary measures to relieve costs on families and efficient industry.

Austrian climate and energy minister Leonore Gewessler said a faster shift to renewables would make the EU “more resilient to price fluctuations in the long term.”

Slovenian infrastructure minister Jernej Vrtovec concluded “we need to decrease our dependency on fossil fuels”.

Robert Tomaszeski, an energy analyst at Warsaw-based think-tank Polityka Insight, said populist politicians in Poland had blamed the EU and its climate policies.

“On the other hand,” he said, “the government is preparing an information campaign on rising energy prices, which may calm the situation down a little bit.”

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In the UK, the crisis has sparked calls for the government to use its upcoming strategy on heat and buildings to insulate homes and transition them away from gas heating and cooking.

The government’s “green homes grant” subsidy scheme was scrapped in March after just six months, after the company running the scheme failed to make it work.

Sam Hall, director of the Conservative Environment Network, tweeted: “Vouchers for heat pumps and insulation are… needed to reduce gas for heating.”

The post European gas shortages prompt calls to accelerate clean energy transition appeared first on Climate Home News.

Russia is the world’s largest exporter of methane gas. Satellite data recently revealed that the frequency of methane plumes from two big Russian pipelines increased in 2020 despite a drop in gas exports. Gas can leak from infrastructure. It is also burned or deliberately released into the atmosphere when oil and gas firms don’t consider it profitable or practical to transport and sell it.

Speaking at the US leaders’ climate summit on Thursday, Putin set out some key facts: “Methane accounts for 20% of anthropogenic emissions. The greenhouse effect of each tonne of methane is 25–28 times greater than a tonne of СО2. Experts believe that if we could halve methane emissions in the next 30 years, global temperatures would decrease by 0.18 degrees by 2050.”

Putin continued: “In this context, it would be extremely important to develop broad and effective international cooperation in the calculation and monitoring of all polluting emissions into the atmosphere. We urge all interested countries to take part in joint research, to invest in climate projects that can have a practical effect and to redouble efforts to create low-carbon technologies to mitigate the consequences and adjust to climate change.”

Saudi, US net zero oil producer initiative lands to scepticism

While Putin’s figures match those used in recent EU methane strategy documents, a major report under development from the UN Environment Programme (Unep) is expected to show faster reductions are achievable and desirable.

The report, produced jointly with the Climate and Clean Air Coalition and due out next month, will estimate 45% cuts by 2030 can avert 0.3C of global warming. The fossil fuel sector has the biggest potential to cut emissions at low or no cost, it will say.

Analysts were pleasantly surprised by Putin’s rhetoric. “It is a welcome change from Russia’s earlier position which flat out denied they have a methane issue,” energy analyst Poppy Kalesi told Climate Home News.

But they noted a lack of specific policy proposals from Putin to tackle the problem.

“Russia’s updated climate target from last year was not an increase in ambition and fails to target a reduction in emissions below the level they are expected to reach under current policies,” said Ryan Wilson of Climate Analytics. “There has been no indication to date of specific measures that would reflect Putin’s proposal for incentivising foreign investment or seeking international scientific collaboration”.

UK faces legal action over public finance for Mozambique gas project

Putin may have been feeling the pressure from Russia’s biggest gas customer, the EU, and awareness that new satellite technology leaves nowhere to hide.

According to state-owned gas company Gazprom, “the Western European market (including Turkey) consumes the bulk of Russian exports”. In 2019, Russia exported nearly 200 billion cubic metres of gas to Europe (including the UK and Turkey).

The EU is consulting on new rules on monitoring, reporting, verification, leak detection and repair in the energy sector. These standards could cover imports as well as gas extracted in the EU.

The EU’s consultation document says: “Most of the fossil fuels consumed in the EU are imported, and 75-90% of the methane emissions associated with these fuels are emitted before reaching the EU’s borders. In principle, obligating non-EU entities supplying energy to the EU as well as EU actors would therefore considerably increase the benefits of such legislation, both in terms of improving information on methane emissions and mitigating them.”

European investors and fossil fuel company Shell have called on the EU to set a methane performance standard to ensure it doesn’t buy fuels from countries with weaker standards.

In March, the EU and Unep set up the International Methane Emissions Observatory (IMEO) to monitor companies’ emissions using company data, satellite technology and scientific studies.

Clean Air Task Force methane director Jonathan Banks said: “The satellites are now starting to give us images and data for parts of the world that we’ve never been able to really look at – and that’s only going to increase. The transparency is going to vastly increase. We’re no longer going to be reliant on what a company or country says it’s methane emissions are. In the near future, we’re going to be able to look at the satellite data and know for certain what countries emissions are from their oil and gas sector. That’s definitely spurring some of the interest Russia has in this because they see that coming.”

The post Putin sounds methane alarm, under satellite surveillance and EU pressure appeared first on Climate Home News.

Submitted in May 2020, Ukraine’s national greenhouse gas inventory report said “the occupation and attempted annexation of Crimea and armed aggression by the Russian Federation” had led to a loss of control over 7% of Ukraine’s territory. “This fact complicates, and sometimes makes impossible, the process of data collecting and reporting, needed for the annual National GHG Inventory.”

The report then detailed why it views Russia as an occupying power, citing UN resolutions and reports.

Moscow has hit back. In a statement released on 30 December, Russia said the allegations were “absolutely incorrect and unacceptable”. It claimed not to be a party in the “Ukrainian internal conflict that covers the territory of Donetsk and Lugansk regions” and argued the Crimean people had chosen self-determination in a controversial 2014 referendum.

Most international actors do not recognise the 2014 referendum and continue to regard the Crimea region as part of Ukraine.

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“I wish it could be taken as a greater serious engagement” with the UN climate process, Mark Galeotti, a professor in Russian politics at University College London, said of the Russian statement. “But rather the language and tone suggest simply a knee-jerk response to the language Kyiv used.”

Galeotti described the spat as “one of the tragedies we see in international bodies’ debates: Moscow (and, in fairness, Kyiv) are more concerned with using them as opportunities to play out their narrative struggle over Crimea than actually engaging with the issues in question”.

Until the conflict broke out in 2014, the two countries had been allies within the climate process. They jointly opposed the Doha amendments to the Kyoto Protocol in 2012 as well as a related dispute in June 2013.

Since then, Ukrainian campaigners have accused their government of using the conflict as an excuse for weak climate targets.

The two countries’ climate pledges are “critically insufficient,” according to Climate Action Tracker. Russia has committed to axe emissions by 30%, and Ukraine 40% from 1990 levels by 2030.

The common baseline year came just before the collapse of the Soviet Union and its vast industries, making it a relatively easy target to achieve.

The UN climate body has been approached for comment.

The post Russia-Ukraine dispute over Crimea spills into UN climate forum appeared first on Climate Home News.

It was only in September last year that Vladimir Putin used executive powers to formally endorse the Paris climate agreement, under which countries have committed to limit global heating “well below 2C” and strive for 1.5C by the end of the century.

Since then, Moscow has done little to align its climate plan with the Paris deal. Instead, it has continued to support fossil fuel expansion, spending $8.4 billion to prop up its oil and gas industry during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Earlier this month, Putin signed another executive order to reduce emissions by 30% from 1990 levels by 2030. That is the more ambitious end of its existing target but still allows emissions to rise significantly, as Russia’s emissions plummeted following the collapse of the Soviet Union and remain at about half the level they were in 1990.

Climate Action Tracker ranks the target as “critically insufficient” to meet the Paris goal and consistent with a pathway towards 4C of warming by the end of the century.

With China, Japan and South Korea recently joining the club of nations aiming to cut their emissions to net zero by the middle of the century, Russia could be one of the last major developed economies to decarbonise, Ryan Wilson, a climate and energy policy analyst at Climate Analytics, told Climate Home News.

EIB approves €1 trillion green investment plan to become ‘climate bank’

A draft long-term climate strategy published in March shows the government is considering reducing its emissions by up to 48% from 1990 levels by 2050 under an “intensive scenario”. This would allow Russia’s emissions to continue to rise for at least another nine years before reducing them just above 2017 levels — far from the 2050 net zero goal demanded by the UN.

Russia would achieve carbon neutrality “in the second half of the 21^st century, closer to its end,” the draft said.

Under a baseline scenario proposed for adoption, emissions would fall by 36% compared to 1990 levels – equivalent to 26% above 2017 levels. Emissions cuts would be achieved by boosting energy efficiency and reducing forest clearance.

Russia’s draft long term decarbonisation strategy published in March. Analysis of Skolkovo Energy Centre, Moscow. 

The country is not on track to meet its 2024 target of generating 4.5% of its energy from renewables, excluding hydropower – one of the lowest targets in the world, Wilson said.

Russia “has shown the least interest in taking the kind of action that most of the rest of the world has agreed to. It sits outside the spirit and intent of the Paris Agreement,” he added.

“There has been a lack of pressure [on Russia] as a result of their intransigence on this issue. The expectations are just so low. They are doing the bare minimum.”

Tracker: Which countries have a net zero carbon goal?

While political pressure may be lacking, a move away from fossil fuels in the European Union, Russia’s biggest gas export market, poses an economic threat. Brussels is considering a carbon border tax on imports and no longer considers gas power to be a “sustainable” or “transition” investment.

“There is an existential threat to Russia’s gas industry regarding the European energy transition,” Sergey Kapitonov, gas analyst at the Skolkovo Energy Center in Moscow, told CHN. “Coal is not the only evil now. Natural gas [demand] has already started to decline in some places.”

In response, Russia is turning its attention east. With large Asian economies expected to turn away from coal to meet their net zero goals, Russia, the world’s top energy exporter, is banking on a surge in natural gas demand.

The vast majority of Russia’s gas reserves are located above the Arctic circle, a region that is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, with temperatures reaching a scorching 38C in June.

The government plans to grow its liquified natural gas (LNG) production in the Arctic ten-fold between 2018 and 2035, according to its 2035 Arctic strategy published last month, with the Yamal peninsula in northwest Siberia the focus of recent LNG developments.

The melting Arctic sea ice will  allow to ships to export LNG to Asian markets across the Northern sea route. By 2035, Russia hopes to increase the volume of maritime cargo transportation in the Arctic more than four-fold.

First named Cop26 sponsors are big investors in offshore wind – and a gas plant

“In the mind of Russian policy makers, gas is still destined to play a huge role. They say that coal is the fuel of the past and natural gas is the fuel of tomorrow,” Kapitonov said.

“It’s a risky game… Russia has to play” to monetise its huge gas reserves, he added. “It’s the destiny of these resource-production nations.”

LNG exports to China are already on the rise and gas exports are expected to grow by 10% during the 2020-2021 heating season, according to Chinese state-owned oil and gas company Sinopec.

In anticipation of growing demand, Russian state-owned Gazprom has started a feasibility study for the construction of a second gas pipeline between eastern Siberia and China.

“If China opens its domestic market to Russian gas, it could become its biggest market,” said Vladimir Chuprov, head of Greenpeace Russia’s energy programme. But Russia faces competition from wind and solar power, as well as Australian and Qatari LNG, he added.

Investing in greenfield oil and gas Arctic projects is “economically suicidal,” said Chuprov. “It means Russia is still in the 20th century and doesn’t understand that it needs its own green deal.”

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Indra Øverland, head of the Centre for Energy Research at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, told Climate Home “Russia’s dependence on oil and gas exports is leaving them vulnerable” to an international move away from fossil fuels.

“Russia still has its head in the sand,” he said, describing it as Russia’s “Kodak moment,” blind to the impact global climate policies will have on its economy.

In an interview with the Guardian earlier this month, energy minister Alexander Novak – since promoted to deputy prime minister – said Russia planned to become a global leader in producing “clean burning hydrogen”.

At present, most hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels in a process that emits carbon dioxide. Russia is working on technology to capture the CO2, Novak said, and can also produce hydrogen by hydrolysis using renewable energy.

Yuriy Melnikov, senior analyst on the power sector at the Skolkovo Energy Center in Moscow, was sceptical. He told Climate Home that in the absence of ambitious climate targets, Russian businesses had little incentive to invest in green hydrogen.

For Chuprov, of Greenpeace, Putin’s support for the oil and gas industry allows him to exert political control over the handful of oligarchs that runs it – and is therefore unlikely to change. “Phasing out oil and gas is phasing out that political system,” he said.

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This is the first climate change case to be filed with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg, France. If admissible, it could set an important precedent, showing the way for other climate lawsuits based on human rights arguments.

Cláudia Agostinho (21), Catarina Mota (20), Martim Agostinho (17), Sofia Oliveira (15), André Oliveira (12) and Mariana Agostinho (8) are suing the 27 European member states, as well as the UK, Switzerland, Norway, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine for failing to make deep and urgent emissions cuts to safeguard their future.

Their complaint comes after lethal wildfires in Portugal in 2017 killed more than 120 people. Researchers have linked the intensity of the 2017 blaze to global warming. The case is being filed after Portugal recorded its hottest July in the last 90 years.

“I am afraid for my future,” youth applicant Mota told reporters during a virtual press conference on Thursday. “I live with the feeling that every year my home becomes a more hostile place,” she said from her home in Leiria, in central Portugal, adding the heat was such that outdoor exercise during the day was unbearable.

“If I have children, what kind of world shall I bring them up in? These are real concerns that I have every day… After the 2017 fires we realised that we must change and urgently stop climate change.”

China among nations likely to miss 2020 deadline for climate plans – UN’s Espinosa

The complexity of the case means it took nearly three years to file with the court following a successful crowdfunding campaign in October 2017.

Gearóid Ó Cuinn, director at the Global Legal Action Network (GLAN), which is acting on behalf of the young people, described the legal action as “unprecedented”.

Gerry Liston, a legal officer at GLAN, told Climate Home News the case could “exert a significant level of pressure on governments in Europe to adopt emissions reductions that science demands”.

Citing research by Climate Action Tracker, lawyers will argue that none of the 33 countries’ plans are aligned with their commitment under the Paris Agreement to limit global temperature rise “well below 2C”.

Climate Action Tracker found the levels of commitments made by the EU and the six other countries being sued, if matched by the rest of the world, would lead to at least 3-4C of warming.

Lawyers in the case are seeking a court order to make countries deepen their emissions reductions both at home and abroad in line with the toughest 1.5C warming limit in the Paris pact.

While the ECHR does not have direct enforcement power, Marc Willers QC, lead counsel in the case, said in a statement such a ruling could empower individuals to pursue the matter through their domestic courts.

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For Annalisa Savaresi, senior lecturer in environmental law at the University of Stirling, Scotland, and Europe director of the Global Network on Human Rights and the Environment, the case is “really interesting” could strengthen the basis for climate litigation to be brought on human rights grounds.

But it faces one “big hurdle,” she told CHN.

Under the admissibility criteria, a case may only be brought to the European Court of Human Right, “after all domestic remedies have been exhausted”. That would require taking the case to the highest available court in all 33 countries.

Liston, of GLAN, told CHN lawyers are applying for an exception to the rule, on the basis pursuing 33 parallel cases is not practical, not least because of financial constraints.

They will also argue that domestic courts in Europe can and must do more to protect their citizens from climate change in line with their human rights obligations. In the UK and Germany, for example, courts have rejected actions by people trying to compel their governments to take swifter climate action.

Liston said the case will “seek to build on the truly historic precedent” set by a ruling in the Netherlands that ordered the Dutch government to make immediate emissions cuts in line with its human rights obligations, including under the European Convention on Human Rights.

Marta Torre-Schaub, director of research at Sorbonne Law School and head of the Climate Change and Law Research Network ClimaLex, told CHN she was “cautious” about the case’s chance of success, saying it could be rejected on procedural grounds.

Savaresi was more optimistic. “I think the court will look really bad if it throws the case at the admissibility level,” she said.

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Under draft plans being negotiated at the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) – the UN body responsible for international shipping – restrictions on heavy fuel oil (HFO), a dirty fuel which propels most of marine transport, would come into effect in July 2024.

But a host of exemptions and waivers would allow most ships using and carrying HFO to continue to pollute Arctic waters until 2029.

“That is much too long to wait to take action to protect the Arctic,” Bryan Comer, senior marine research at the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), told Climate Home News.

In a study published on Thursday by ICCT, Comer and his co-authors estimated that if the draft ban had been in place in 2019, around three-quarters of the fleet using HFO would have still been allowed to carry and use the fuel in the Arctic.

As the Arctic fleet grows, so will the number of ships that qualify for an exemption, “and the effectiveness of the ban would be further eroded,” the study’s authors warned.

For the Clean Arctic Alliance, which campaigns to ban HFO use in the Arctic, the proposal will allow “business as usual for most shipping operators in the region, and could fuel a race towards lower safety standards”.

Mauritius oil spill compensation could be limited by maritime law technicality

When burned, HFO emits black carbon, a short-lived pollutant that absorbs sunlight and traps heat in the atmosphere, contributing to global warming. The Arctic, which is already warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, is particularly sensitive to these emissions.

Burning and carrying HFO has been banned in Antarctic waters since 2011, but plans for similar restrictions in the resource-rich Arctic have met with resistance. Russia, which could benefit from the opening of more shipping routes in the region as Arctic sea ice melts, is one of the most vocal opponents.

In the absence of regulation, HFO use in the Arctic is rapidly increasing. Between 2015 and 2019, its use by oil tankers rocketed by 300%, according to the ICCT.

Finland, Germany, Iceland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and the US proposed to ban the fuel in the Arctic arguing that a single spill “could have devastating and lasting effects on fragile Arctic marine and coastal environments”.

But Russia argued a ban would “negatively impact the local communities and industries of the region” which depend on ships to bring fuel, food and goods to remote areas and that the “potential benefits [of the ban]… remain unclear” when considering national efforts to reduce the risk of oil spills.

Ship emissions: major study flags a bigger role for governments

A watered down version of the proposal is up for consideration at the next meeting of the IMO’s environmental protection committee in November. That is the last chance for delegates to make significant changes to the draft.

Campaigners argue the benefits for communities and the environment of avoiding an HFO spill in the Arctic outweigh small increases in costs for switching to cleaner fuels, which should be borne by states.

“The danger of an Arctic HFO spill is the combination of knowing its major impacts while not knowing how to clean it up,” Ilan Kelman, professor of disasters and health, at University College London and at the University of Agder, Norway, told CHN in an email.

“We do not have sufficient techniques or technologies for fully recovering released HFO or cleaning up its damage efficiently. We do not even have a detailed understanding of HFO’s behaviour and persistence in the wide ranges of Arctic temperatures and wave conditions. The possible environmental harm from an HFO spill is immense with limited options for averting this destruction,” he said.

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And yet, to bring Russia onside, waivers were introduced for Arctic coastal nations’ ships operating in their own waters. In 2019, this would have made 366 ships eligible for a waiver – including 325 Russian-flagged vessels, according to the ICCT.

“Not all of these ships are re-supplying Arctic communities. Most of them are transporting resources extracted from the Arctic,” Comer told CHN.

Waivers came on top of exemptions, including for recently built ships with fuel tanks designed to prevent spills. Most of the largest oil tankers, built after August 2010 and operating in the Arctic – many of which transport Russian oil  – already meet exemption criteria under the current proposal, Comer said.

The research found that had the draft ban applied in 2019, it would have reduced the carriage of HFO by only 30%, its use by 16% and black carbon emissions by 5%. Doing away with exemptions and limiting waivers would have reduced HFO use by 75% and cut black carbon emissions by more than a fifth.

Most new bulk carriers and oil tankers joining the Arctic fleet will likely join the exemption list and be allowed to use and carry heavy fuel oil until 2029, Sian Prior, lead advisor to the Clean Arctic Alliance, told CHN.

“This is unacceptable,” she said. “If exemptions and waivers are included than the reality will be that little will change when the ban comes into effect in the middle of 2024.”

“In order to provide the Arctic with the protection so desperately needed, the Clean Arctic Alliance is calling for the draft Arctic ban regulation to be strengthened with no exemptions and no waivers.”

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Maxim Reshetnikov said that Moscow “is extremely concerned by attempts to use the climate agenda to create new barriers”, following a meeting of the BRICS emerging economy nations last Thursday (23 July).

“We see a danger in this, including in the initiative to create a carbon adjustment mechanism that could essentially turn into new duties,” the minister said, referring to the European Commission’s plans to deploy a carbon border tax.

The anti-climate-dumping tool – still under design – would slap additional levies on imported goods that are manufactured in an unsustainable way, in order to boost domestic production and give offshore industries an incentive to go green.

But the border tax will have to walk a thin line between contributing to the EU’s green policies and sticking to WTO rules, which Russia – the world’s fourth-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases – already claims is unlikely to happen.

“It’s very important to us that all measures that are adopted in furthering the environmental agenda strictly comply with WTO rules, because the mechanisms that are now being proposed by some of our colleagues, in our view, contravene WTO rules,” Reshetnikov said.

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In February, a top Kremlin advisor warned Russia’s business leaders to start adapting their production lines under the assumption that a border tariff will be in place in the near future.

Brussels and Moscow are already butting heads at WTO level. Last week, the Geneva-based body upheld Russia’s complaint against the EU’s anti-dumping measures, the third time the bloc has lost a case against its large eastern neighbour.

A Commission spokesperson said that the decision “confirms the legality of specific EU anti-dumping rules under the WTO law while raising certain issues as regards their practical application.” The EU executive plans to study the ruling in more detail before acting.

The EU is not the only world power mulling the idea of loading borders with green tariffs, according to a draft of the American Democratic Party’s election platform, the US would do the same if Joe Biden defeats incumbent Donald Trump in this year’s presidential election.

“We will apply a carbon adjustment fee at the border to products from countries that fail to live up to their commitments under the Paris Climate Agreement because we won’t let polluters undermine American competitiveness,” the document states.

Biden has pledged to steer the US back into the Paris climate accord if elected president, after Trump decided in mid-2017 to trigger the lengthy withdrawal process, which is still not complete.

Green attitude adjustment

The carbon border tax is not just aimed at helping Brussels ratchet up its green credentials, it is also seen as a way for the EU to pay off the €750 billion debt the bloc’s member states agreed to take on at a Council summit last week.

Senior EU officials told Euractiv that the Commission considers the Council’s explicit approval of the border tax idea – as part of a basket of so-called revenue-generating ‘own resources’ – one of the main victories of last week’s crucial budget meeting.

According to its calculations for the next long-term budget and recovery instrument, the Commission predicts that a border tax could bring in between €5 billion and €14 billion every year “depending on the scope and design”.

Poland bails out coal, yet wins access to EU climate funds

In the final Council deal, leaders agreed that “the Commission will put forward in the first semester of 2021 proposals on a carbon border adjustment mechanism”, with a view to deploying it by the beginning of 2023.

The EU executive was already working on the idea, given that President Ursula von der Leyen included it on a list of her administration’s priorities, but this is the first time that it has received such clear support in the Council.

Von der Leyen has tasked a number of her Commissioners, including economic chief Paolo Gentiloni, energy boss Kadri Simson and trade Commissioner Phil Hogan, with putting together a legally sound proposal. WTO-compliance is the top-line objective.

Last week, the Commission launched a consultation and put forward four main ways the mechanism could work, ranging from a list of taxable goods and obligations on importers to buy permits, to an EU-wide tax on certain goods, whether they are imported or not.

A list of suitable imports, which EU officials have suggested could include Southeast Asian electric car batteries or even steel, is the most likely to fall foul of WTO scrutiny, while the idea of allowing the EU to tax products bloc-wide is a political no-go for most countries.

Forcing importers to buy permits, either from the EU carbon market (ETS) or a special pool, would require serious ETS reform. The Commission says in its consultation that the border tax would replace existing systems like free allocation of permits to certain industries.

Those gratuities are supposed to act as an incentive for manufacturers and other polluters to stay in the EU, in an effort to prevent the phenomenon known as carbon leakage. As a result, many companies benefit from millions of euros in avoided costs every year.

This article was produced by our media partners Euractiv.

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Preliminary findings, shared exclusively with Climate Home News, showed that only China, India and four other nations in the Group of 20 leading economies were committing more public money to clean energy than to polluting sectors.

“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity… to use government funding, government subsidies, loans, to reshape our future,” said Ivetta Gerasimchuk, Sustainable Energy Supplies lead at the International Institute for Sustainable Development think-tank, one of the groups involved.

G20 nations are committing trillions of dollars to combat the economic slump induced by Covid-19.

But “the overall trend is that… there is more money going into fossil fuels than into clean energy,” she told a webcast organised by the Stockholm Environment Institute, another of the 14 research organisations.

“What we see is pretty much what countries did before the Covid crisis they keep doing. In this sense the crisis… has just exacerbated the trends we had before, unfortunately.”

Jamaica becomes first Caribbean nation to submit tougher climate plan to UN

The findings are due for publication on 15 July, at a new website, energypolicytracker.org.

Preliminary data shared with CHN showed that, as of 1 July, national and subnational-level public money commitments to fossil fuels dominated over cleaner energies in the United States, Russia, Australia, Canada, France, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and South Korea and Turkey.

The G20 countries where commitments to clean energy exceeded those to fossil fuels were China, India, Japan, Germany, the UK and Brazil.

In the five remaining G20 members – the European Union, Italy, Mexico, Argentina and South Africa – there was so far a lack of data or it was hard to disentangle support levels.

Gerasimchuk also said there were very many “shades of green”. Supporting battery-powered cars in a shift from petrol and diesel engines would be good for the climate, for instance, but not if the electricity used to recharge them came from coal rather than solar or wind power.

China was a borderline case, with a big rail bailout package tipping the balance towards green investment.

Michael Lazarus, director of the Stockholm Environment Institute’s US Center, said that “while much is on hold because of Covid, there is yet to be a sign of a reset in most countries” to help achieve goals of the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

Lazarus was lead author of a Production Gap report last year that found the world was set to produce about 50% more fossil fuels out to 2030 than would be consistent with the Paris goal of limiting warming to 2C, and 120% more than would be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5C.

Airlines’ climate obligations postponed as UN body endorses industry proposal

“We expect to find a similar disconnect” between climate and energy policies in an update of that report later in 2020, he said. He said global carbon emissions may fall 8% this year from 2019 because of the economic slowdown but that they “could easily rebound strongly” in coming years unless governments shift to more sustainable policies.

Adam Matthews, Co-Chair of the Transitions Pathway Initiative representing major institutional investors, said that major European oil companies, such as Royal Dutch Shell or Total, had started to engage with the idea of net zero emissions in what he called a “very significant shift” from past reluctance.

But he said companies also needed governments to act. “You can’t expect companies to act in the absence of regulation,” he said.

Among the most radical steps by a government, Costa Rica has imposed a moratorium on oil exploration. But it is now facing calls to reassess the policy to raise money to recover from the Covid-19 crisis, said Andrea Meza Murillo, director of the climate change directorate at the Ministry of Environment and Energy.

“It’s risky times right now for all of these policies,” she said. “We need to show we can generate green jobs”.

The 14 expert organizations behind the upcoming study are International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES), Oil Change International (OCI), Overseas Development Institute (ODI), Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), the Columbia University in the City of New York, Forum Ökologisch-Soziale Marktwirtschaft (FÖS), Fundación Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (FARN), Instituto de Estudos Socioeconômicos (INESC), Institute for Climate Economics (I4CE), Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM), Legambiente, REN21 and The Australia Institute (TAI).

The post Big nations aid fossil fuels more than clean energies amid pandemic, researchers find appeared first on Climate Home News.

Emissions by Russia, the world’s fifth biggest emitter, plunged after smokestack industries collapsed after the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union and are still only around half the levels in the UN’s benchmark year of 1990.

All countries are under pressure to announce more ambitious policies on climate change in 2020, the first five-year milestone of the Paris climate agreement, with calls to link stimulus packages to combat the coronavirus to a greener economy.

In a draft plan stretching to 2050, Russia’s Ministry of Economic Development projected that emissions would rise to the equivalent of 2.08 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2030, including land use and forestry, or 67% of 3.11 billion tonnes recorded in 1990.

The 2030 level would be up from 1.58 billion tonnes in 2017, or 51% of 1990 levels, according to the “basic” scenario in the plan, published in Russian on Monday.

The 2030 goal is more ambitious, however, than the existing target to limit 2030 emissions to 75% of 1990 levels, or 2.33 billion tonnes, submitted by Moscow as its contribution to the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

Coronavirus slows developing nations’ plans to step up climate action in 2020

Under the new draft goal, Russia would seek to reduce demand for fossil fuels and boost renewable energy. It would also upgrade insulation for buildings and encourage energy efficiency from petrochemicals to agriculture, it said. It also noted some benefits from warming, such as greater access to shipping routes in the Arctic north.

By 2050, the basic scenario projected that emissions would dip to 1.99 billion tonnes, or 64% of 1990 levels.

“This is not an ambitious plan … it would allow emissions to rise,” Niklas Höhne, founding partner of the New Climate Institute, told Climate Home News.

“It’s not in line with the Paris Agreement. Countries need to go for the highest possible ambition”. He said that a Russian overview of its climate policies submitted to the United Nations in 2019 was more ambitious than the new plan.

“We welcome this as a start but it’s only baby steps,” Vladimir Chuprov, campaign director of Greenpeace in Moscow, told CHN. He said Moscow’s plan had some positive aspects, such as encouraging the growth of forests that soak up carbon dioxide.

But allowing a rise in overall emissions “isn’t ambitious at all. It means no real progress,” he said.

The Russian ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Russia is the fifth largest emitter after China, the US, the European Union and India.

The United Nations says that global emissions will need to fall by 7.6% a year in the decade to 2030 to get on track to limit the rise in average global temperatures to the strictest goal set in the Paris Agreement of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times to limit heatwaves, floods, droughts and a rise in sea levels.

The Russian plan, now out for review by other ministries, also included a more “intensive” scenario that would allow emissions to rise slightly and then fall to 52% of 1990 levels by 2050, or 1.62 billion tonnes – little changed from current levels.

Governments have ‘historic opportunity’ to accelerate clean energy transition, IEA says

“The transition to the trajectory of an intensive scenario of low-carbon development will allow Russia to achieve carbon neutrality in the second half of the 21st century closer to its completion,” the ministry said in a statement.

A Climate Action Tracker (CAT), run by European research groups including the New Climate Institute, last year rated Russia’s 2015 plan as “critically inadequate”.

President Vladimir Putin has sometimes argued that warming will bring benefits, such as higher farm productivity, to Russia.

CAT said Russia’s decision in October 2019 to ratify the Paris Agreement, long after most other nations, “was more symbolic than substantive, as it did not come with any improvement to its very weak emissions reduction target, nor with an announcement of any new climate policies.” CAT said it was still reviewing the new Russian plan.

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The new version, which was first reported by Russian daily Kommersant and seen by CHN, does away with legally binding targets and sanctions included in a draft dating from March.

Also scrapped was a section detailing a fund to support carbon-cutting projects, along with sections allowing the government to strengthen the bill over time.

The government could present the draft bill to parliament by December, according to Greenpeace Russia.

The U-turn came after the ministry of the economy, which penned the bill with a view to modernising Russia’s infrastructure and economy, held talks with the ministry of energy, ministry of industry and trade and the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP).

As rich countries slow walk green finance, Putin offers Africa an alternative

The latter’s members include giants from the country’s steel, oil, gas and coal industry, such as Russia’s largest coal company, the Siberian Coal Energy Company (Suek).

Although RSPP recently supported the ratification of the Paris Agreement, it has shied away from supporting state measures to decarbonise.

Speaking on 17 October at an environmental forum, RSPP chair Alexander Shokhin objected to climate regulations, such as cap and trade, carbon taxes or a fund for carbon-cutting projects, stressing that Russia had already “fulfilled [its] obligations to reduce to the level of 70-75% (greenhouse gas emissions) from 1990”.

Russia: The fight for the world’s largest forest

The 1990 baseline for Russia’s climate target predates the collapse of the Soviet Union and its vast industries, making it an underwhelming target. In fact, the world’s fourth largest polluter could see its emissions rise and yet still meet its current Paris pledge, according to Climate Action Tracker.

Mikhael Yulkin, chair of the Ecological Investment Centre, said fossil fuel lobbying had not only influenced business and government fora, but shaped national media coverage, which was “negative” towards the proposed bill.

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This culminated in a media backlash against Greta Thunberg’s speech at the UN climate summit convened by Antonio Guterres. The days following her speech saw an infamous 2017 article denying man-made climate change by oceanographer Alexander Gorodnitsky go viral.

“Russian lobbyists have successfully opposed cap and trade carbon pricing,” Vladimir Chuprov, a climate campaigner for Greenpeace, told CHN. “The only conclusion we can draw is: in Russia the industry does not want to convert to green technologies.”

Responding to Kommersant, the economy ministry said that it reserved the right to introduce “additional measures, if necessary to achieve national emission targets [in a separate bill for] the long-term strategy of economic development of the Russian Federation with a low level of greenhouse gas emissions”.

This article was amended.

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In Paris, France, rich and developed countries met to replenish the Green Climate Fund. The UN fund was created as a carrot to convince developing countries, which have little historic responsibility for climate change, to curtail their greenhouse gas emissions.

With existing funds expected to run-out by the end of the year, the GCF’s two-day pledging conference sought to raise at least $9 billion of new cash by Friday to finance green projects in poor countries during the period 2020-2023.

Speaking ahead of the GCF pledging conference, Yannick Glemarec, executive director of the GCF, told Climate Home News the fund’s objective was “for countries not to have to chose between today and tomorrow”, between meeting energy needs and cutting emissions, but to integrate climate action and economic development.

Chile: Massive protests and disruption ahead of trade and UN climate summits

New contributions to the fund totalling between $9bn and $10bn would be “a big success”, he said, and would “send a positive signal to developing countries”.

But many African leaders, the continent where 600 million lack access to electricity and the fund’s cash could make the most difference, were 2,900km from Paris, courting a very different opportunity on the shores of the Black Sea.

Dozens of African heads of state, including the leaders of Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana, along with ministers and thousands of business leaders arrived in the resort town of Sochi, to strengthen Russia-Africa cooperation and discuss prospective military, infrastructure and energy deals, largely focused on the oil, gas and nuclear industries.

The two-day summit, led by Russian president Vladimir Putin and Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, was the first Russia-Africa cooperation conference. It is a signal of Putin’s intent to compete for African business with China’s massive Belt and Road investment project.

France: Emmanuel Macron’s war on climate activism

Opening the summit on Wednesday, Putin hailed Africa as “one of the cool centres of economic growth” and encouraged “building close business ties” in countries across the continent.

Making no mention of climate change, Putin praised the expanding work of Russian oil and gas companies Gazprom, Rosneft and Lukoil in Africa and the creation of a nuclear industry in Egypt and Nigeria. “We are most certainly going to support their plans at the government level,” he said.

Russian companies are currently developing oil and gas-fields in Egypt, Mozambique, Algeria, Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon and Angola. Russian total trade with African countries reached $20bn last year, a small amount compared with China’s $204bn the same year.

Egyptian president el-Sisi said Russia was “a reliable partner for the African continent” and welcomed investments in the development and infrastructure sectors that the continent needs. “We regard this forum as a platform to develop the relationship for mutual investment and cooperation,” he added.

Theo Neethling, head of political studies at the University of the Free State in South Africa, said: “Survival and developmental politics are much higher on Africa’s agenda than green politics.

“African states view Beijing and Moscow as partners – albeit senior partners – that could provide much-needed funding without any strings attached pertaining to democracy or human rights.”

Wealthy country’s commitment to delivering green finance is not viewed with the same level of trust. Rich countries have promised to mobilise $100bn of climate finance a year from a variety of sources by 2020. The OECD estimates that flow reached $71.2bn in 2017 (a number Oxfam has called “grossly overestimate[d]”), but still admits rich countries are not on track meet the goal.

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Even if contributions to the GCF at the Paris summit reach the $10bn mark, it would be less than donors’ initial $10.3bn pledge to the fund for the previous period to 2020. It would also not be enough to fund the existing $15bn pipeline of projects seeking assistance as of December 2018.

The US and Australia, which collectively pledged $3.2bn last time around (although Donald Trump’s US reneged to the tune of $2bn), have said they would offer nothing in 2019. Other countries’ increased contributions have not yet filled the hole.

Sixteen countries have already promised to deliver $7.4bn. Germany, Norway, France, UK, Sweden, South Korea, Denmark and Iceland announced a doubling of their contributions. Others like Japan, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, Finland Portugal and New Zealand are yet to make a contribution. Russia is one of the 25 delegations participating in the pledging conference. It gave $3m in 2014.

With clean technologies becoming increasingly cheaper, climate advocates hope development in Africa will proceed along a less-carbon intensive pathway than Europe, the US, Russia or even China.

If Russia is cutting oil and gas deals in Sochi, “they are no friend of Africa,” Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa, told CHN, warning against the continent becoming “the dumping ground for other countries’ fossil fuel technology”.

“The GCF has become the most significant climate funder in Africa,” said Adow. “This funding is vital in diverting us from a path towards climate catastrophe towards one where the poorest people can have access to clean energy.”‘

But this vision is in danger of being outcompeted. Crispus Mugambi, resilience and climate change manager at Care Kenya, told CHN the money pledged to the GCF was “a drop in the ocean” compared to developing countries’ existing needs. This week, the UN’s Sustainable Energy for All issued a major report finding investment for electricity in sub-Saharan Africa was “alarmingly low” and had fallen in several countries.

“Africa probably needs hundreds of billions of dollars to be able to develop in a climate sensitive manner,” said Mugambi.

“There is common sense that development with clean energy is the way to go but African governments are trying to develop their economies with resources at their disposal,” he added.

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This is where the gas from the Nord Stream 2 pipeline will be produced. Yamal did not originally belong to Russia. The Russian Empire began the colonisation of Yamal in the 16th century.

The Russian empire was mainly interested in profiteering from the region’s fur, which it sold to Europe. One third of the Russian state’s public treasury derived from the fur trade with the West. Before that could happen, land was seized. The indigenous peoples of Yamal resisted colonisation and, in response, the colonialists brutally killed them.

The Soviets separated indigenous peoples from their children and reindeers by force. Indigenous peoples have organised the Mandalada, a movement to safeguard their traditional way of life. After fierce resistance, Mandalada participants were arrested.

The discovery of oil and gas deposits in the Yamal Peninsula, which promised the region prosperity, did not improve, but rather worsened the situation. Gazprom continues to seize the lands of the indigenous peoples of Yamal in an attempt to extract even more gas. As a result, the local population is left without grazing [land] for its reindeer. For the indigenous peoples of Yamal, little has changed since the 16th century: the empire took furs from them and sold them to the West. Now the empire is taking oil and gas from them and selling it to the West. The lion’s share of tax revenue from the sale of fossil fuels does not remain in the Yamal region, but is sent to Moscow.

Russia formally joins Paris Agreement

One of the serious climatic problems in Yamal is gas flaring. It is barbaric and wasteful. Due to procedural imperfections, the gas is simply burned and released into the atmosphere, increasing greenhouse gas emissions. According to the World Bank, Russia is the world’s biggest gas flare emitter. In 2018, Russia accounted for nearly 21.3% of global gas flaring.

In the Yamal Peninsula, there are about 1,500 such flares. Gazprom systematically pollutes the atmosphere with greenhouse gases. In 2015, the local prosecutor’s office in Yamal increased methane emissions six-fold and carbon black emissions 37-fold.

The Russian authorities are not fighting Gazprom’s environmental crimes. The fines and warnings that Yamal prosecutors impose on Gazprom don’t have any impact on the company’s behaviour.

Indigenous Finno-Ugric peoples saw their rights violated during the construction of Nord Stream 2. The gas pipeline destroyed the native Finno-Ugric lands and the Kurgalsky reserve, which is home to rare plants, mosses and bird species.

Nord Stream 2 AG, the company behind the project, has hidden the true value of the Kurgalsky reserve. The real consequences of the construction of the gas pipeline on this nature reserve were never mentioned, be it during the public hearings on the project in Russia and other countries, or in the company’s Espoo report.

Greenpeace Austria has obtained secret minutes of meetings between the Russian government, Nord Stream 2 AG and Gazprom, during which they discussed changes to environmental legislation.

Surveys began illegally, without any permits, on the Kurgalsky reserve. As a result of this intrusion into a unique ecosystem, hundreds of rare plants have been destroyed.

The fight for the world’s largest forest

Double standards are rife when it comes to carving out the routes of the gas pipeline in Germany and Russia.  In Germany, where the value of the coastal territory is lower than that of the Kurgalsky reserve, Nord Stream 2 AG considers that it is possible to use a micro-tunneling construction method. In Russia, under similar conditions and with the incomparably higher value of the Kurgalsky Reserve, the “traditional method of construction with a 85m wide open trench” has been adopted. This method has a negative impact on the ecosystem of the Kurgalsky Reserve.

Nord Stream 2 violates Russian rights. The truth is that after selling Russian gas to the West, there are not enough to meet the needs of the Russian people. Gas programmes have been reduced: 30% of Russians live in gas-free houses.

The Russian authorities fix this internal energy supply problem in the most environmentally damaging way possible: they use coal instead of gas. The operation of coal-fired power plants, which are not equipped with modern filters, leads to real environmental catastrophes. For example, in Krasnoyarsk, residents often witness the “black sky” effect caused by finely fragmented coal dust.

Thanks to the Nord Stream 2 project, Europeans will receive less polluting gas. While the Russians will choke on coal dust, the indigenous peoples of Yamal will continue to suffer from gas combustion by Gazprom and will be deprived of the best pastures, and the unique Kurgalsky reserve will suffer severely. With the proceeds from the sale of fossil fuels, Putin’s regime is able to achieve its archaic political ambitions, carry out political repression, seize the territories of neighbouring states, bribe Western politicians and produce propaganda. Obviously, without the demand for Russian gas, Putin’s plan would simply not work.

Are Europeans okay with this reality and with the price of “cheap” Russian gas?

Yevgeniya Chirikova is a Russian environmental activist who received the Goldman Prize for the Environment in 2012 for her fight to preserve the Khimki forest from the Moscow-St. Petersburg motorway.

The post What is the real cost of cheap Russian gas? appeared first on Climate Home News.

On Friday, deputy prime minister Alexei Gordeev ordered the ministries of environment and foreign affairs to submit a bill to ratify the accord to parliament by September 1, according to a government statement.

The country, which ranks as the world’s fourth biggest polluter, is one of 12 out of 197 signatories to the Paris Agreement not to have ratified the accord.

The communiqué said it was “now necessary… to launch the process of ratification before the World Climate Action Summit [on 23] September 2019” – a key, last-chance climate conference convened by UN chief Antonio Guterres that aims to boost countries’ emission reduction pledges.

Until Russia allows us to rise together, I will strike for the climate alone

The move follows months of back-and-forth consultations between the economic development ministry, which penned the law, and the ministries of resources and environment and foreign affairs.

The government statement said ratification of the Paris Agreement “could give Russia additional opportunities to participate in all negotiation processes and protect its interests in international fora that define the rules for reducing CO2 emissions and develop relevant documents”.

Aside from the looming climate action summit, the government also cited a global shift in demand towards low carbon energy as a reason for the bill. “The world’s electric power industry is becoming less carbon-intensive, and this predetermines the competitive advantage of goods produced in countries with greener energy,” it read.

David Attenborough: Climate change may become abhorred as much as slavery

On Tuesday at a global manufacturing and industrialisation conference he was hosting in Yekaterinburg, president Vladimir Putin said Russia was experiencing the effects of the climate crisis, with Arctic temperatures rising faster than anywhere on the planet.

“The degradation of nature and climate continues,” Putin said. “And it’s getting more and more acute with droughts, bad harvests, natural disasters.”

However Putin said renewable energy should not lead to “the complete abandonment of nuclear or hydrocarbon energy”. He urged international cooperation on nuclear power development and warned against energy “absolutism” and said “blind faith in simple, showy, but ineffective solutions leads to problems”.

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The Russian leader said: “Will it be comfortable for people to live on a planet with a palisade of wind turbines and several layers of solar panels?”

He continued: “Everybody knows wind energy is good, but are they remembering about the birds in this case? How many birds are dying? They shake so much that worms come out of the ground. Really, it’s not a joke, it’s a serious consequence of these modern ways of getting energy. I’m not saying that it doesn’t need to be developed, of course, but we shouldn’t forget about the problems associated with it.”

There are no references to worms emerging from the ground because of the vibration of windmills in scientific literature. The only online mention in English is a 2011 post on a US anti-wind power blog site.

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Russia is in the process of reviewing a framework climate legislation to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Currently under debate in Russia’s upper chamber, the legislation would give the government powers to introduce greenhouse gas emission targets for companies and charges for those that exceed them, with proceeds potentially going into a fund to support carbon-cutting projects. It also lays the groundwork for a cap and trade system, emissions permits and tax breaks for companies reducing or capturing their emissions.

NGOs have cautiously welcomed the bills in a country traditionally hostile to climate action, with the autocratic regime repeatedly thwarting any attempt by students to organise climate marches.

Meanwhile, the government continues to seek out partnerships with China for oil exploration in the Arctic. In June, China National Chemical Engineering signed an agreement with oil company Neftegazholding, a sister company to the state oil company, Rosnef, to explore Payaha oil field in Taymyr peninsula in North Siberia. It is estimated that the whole field has 420 million tons of oil reserves.

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We cannot be ruled by fear. But fear came first. I was a 24-year-old student when I read about Greta Thunberg on Greenpeace International. I could not even imagine doing something like that in Russia. This was in October.

Then, in February, I was at a march in memory of the former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov, who was killed because he was not afraid. Something changed in me. I understood that it was now or never.

This article is part of a collaboration between Climate Home News and the global student climate strike movement. Read why we are offering a platform to young people here.

After fear there is the search for opportunities. You need to understand there are very contradictory laws for protests in Russia.

If you under 18 years old, it is illegal. If you are older, you can protest only alone, because every protest with more than one person must be approved by the government.

The government has set aside Sokolniki park for protest, they call it ‘Hyde Park’ after the famous activism site in London. It’s so quiet there you might as well protest in a forest, but it’s very difficult to receive an approval for a better place.

We staged our first student strike there in March. It was really hard to get the information out about that action. Even Greenpeace Russia at first was afraid to write about it, because in Russia it’s now illegal to “involve” a minor in a protest. Still, around fifty people came.

One of the coordinators told me that the police called her school and asked for information about her, saying she was suspected of attracting minors to “extremist” activities. Most likely they wanted to scare her, because it would look terrible for them to arrest her. They don’t need to jail everyone, they just need everyone to be afraid.

Sokolniki is where we had planned to hold another march on Friday, as part of the next global strike for climate, but on Thursday the authorities cancelled our permit claiming some technicality.

Arshak Makichyan at a protest in remembrance of Russia’s former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov (Photo: Arshak Makichyan)

Visible protest in Moscow is very important. The politicians are most afraid of big protests in big cities and here people are more ‘liberal’. So, like Greta, I decided to make my stand alone, every Friday in Pushkin Square in the middle of the capital.

At first, the police didn’t care about my single picket (most likely they thought that I’m just crazy). But after six weeks of striking each Friday, the English-language Moscow Times asked me for an interview. The next week, during my picket, the police came to me and asked loads of questions. Why do you do it? How much are you being paid? They care about my answers. A thousand roubles? Why so little? Then they took picture of my passport and went to consult with their chiefs.

The best path for them is to ignore me. They are watching and waiting. When I make my first mistake, or when my protest becomes more effective, I think they will jail me.

School climate strikes go global, with actions planned in 92 countries

But there is some good news too. I’m not alone anymore. As part of the next global school strike on 24 May, we are organising with the student union Uchenik.

In other cities, protests are less restricted. Kirov, Yaroslavl, Irkutsk, Blagoveshchensk, Saint Peterburg, Saratov and Nizhny Novgorod all have protests planned.

And there are many people who want to join to me but can’t or are afraid to go alone and can’t go with me because of the law. On Twitter and on Russian social media, people are talking about my pickets. Last week one student did a single picket in Yaroslavl, and another helped me set up the Fridays for Future Russia Instagram page. Many people took part in my flash mob #LetRussiaStrikeForClimate. I have many new friends with whom I can talk about climate change in the Russian language.

Choosing friends is important. Who can you trust or not? You start to get kind of paranoid, because in Russia you can’t be sure.

Now I’ve been protesting for ten weeks, I have to choose what to do next. It’s a choice between the people close to me, who disprove of my strikes because they afraid for me…and the future.

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Why is it difficult to protest here? Because the north remembers: Stalin’s repression, the February Revolution and civil war, the 90s after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Times change, but fear remains.

We fear because of Russian laws and politicians. We have a constitution and rights, and we have a reality.

If you work, the authorities can lay you off from your job because of your protest. The police can torture and beat you if they want or they can send someone to do it (and they have many other ways of blackmail and intimidation). And there are no fair courts, because they do what they are told to do.

If you want to protest about climate change, you need to know that most Russian people think that it’s good for them or don’t know anything about it. Most Russians must fight to survive and have no time for science. They have more ‘real’ and obvious problems.

That’s why oil companies don’t need to spend money to lie or manipulate our understanding. And don’t forget, here oil companies and mass media are mostly state owned. That’s why “our” mass media are completely silent about global warming. Like when the UK declared an ecological emergency, they said nothing, about the Fridays for Future protests of more than one million people around the world, they said nothing.

And even if you decide to protest, for many, many people (maybe even for your parents) it means meaning you are a spy from the US (or something like that), especially for those who like to watch Russian TV.

If you love freedom, you must be jailed; if you love nature, you must destroy it; if you are a good man, you must go to war. The Russian soul is difficult to understand.

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The draft bill would give the government powers to introduce greenhouse gas emission targets for companies, and charges for those that exceed them, with proceeds potentially going into a fund to support carbon-cutting projects.

The legislation, which has been drawn up by the Ministry of Economic Development, is under consultation with other ministries and stakeholders and expected to be finalised in June.

The framework includes different regulatory mechanisms, such as a cap and trade system of emissions permits and tax breaks for companies reducing or capturing their emissions.

Specific targets for particular sectors are not included. From the set of policy instruments presented, though, future governments would then be able to “select and apply, as required”, says Alexei Kokorin, director of the climate and energy programme at WWF Russia.

Russia reviews ratification of Paris Agreement

The move has been welcomed by environmental NGOs which have long called for legally binding targets on greenhouse gas emissions in Russia.

Vladimir Chuprov, from Greenpeace Russia, said the law, if passed, would set a “new legal norm for Russian legislative history”, providing “CO2 and other greenhouse gases with legal status.” It “puts the question of CO2 cuts on the table,” he added, even if the “targets are low”.

The current draft is likely to face strong opposition from within the Russian parliament and industry. A source from the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP), which presented an alternative, weaker piece of legislation in December, excluding quotas, emissions trading and charges for exceeding emissions targets, told the Russian newspaper Kommersant that it “could not support” the legislation “in its present form”.

Russian environmentalists are divided over the chances of the climate legislation passing into law, with only the ministries of economy and environment said to be in favour of the text.

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Backed by the fossil fuel industry, the energy ministry, Chuprov said, opposes the current version of the law. “They are very scared that this law will damage the fossil fuel sector in Russia,” he told CHN.

Kokorin said misinformation surrounding the Paris Agreement had encouraged the formation of a “very large opposition” from “people closest to the president, among whom the Russian military and intelligence”.

Consultants, such as climate sceptics from the Russian Academy of Science, have deliberately sought to undermine the ratification of the Paris Agreement by suggesting that the deal could later be amended to impose targets on countries, or penalise countries not respecting their commitments, he said.

Kokorin described the current version, which outlines penalties for CO2 emissions, as “absolutely unfeasible”. “Big business and oligarchs will fight against it. It will be weakened,” Kokorin said. “They are smoothly pushing the goal of the ratification under the carpet.”

Chuprov, however, said that he thought that the legislation had an “80-90% chance” of passing this summer.

The legislation steers clear of mentioning the Paris Agreement, which Russia is one of the few countries yet to ratify. Last week, the president’s special representative for environmental protection, ecology and transport Sergei Ivanov announced that the government would only ratify the Paris Agreement once a “stocktake” of Russia’s forests and their capacity to absorb CO2, currently underway, had been completed.

The head of the Russian Federal Forestry Agency, Ivan Valentik, has said the inventory should be ready for 2020.

The legislation comes amid efforts by president Vladimir Putin to modernise Russia for an era of greener international markets. A 2018 state report found up to 70% of Russia’s energy infrastructure, which includes nuclear and pipelines, was outdated. Under such conditions, the social and economic damage from accidents can be estimated at 600-700 billion rubles ($9.35-10.9bn) per year, threatening Russia’s economic stability.

“For Putin, it’s quite important because politicians understand that any accident like Chernobyl has a political impact,” Chuprov said. “This is why Putin is trying to convince industry to invest more into the modernisation of Russia.”

A framework law on carbon markets and greenhouse gas emissions was the most straightforward way to “motivate oligarchs to invest more into low-carbon technology,” according to Chuprov.

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This article was published in partnership with DeSmog UK.

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