Russian Federation

Critically Insufficient4°C+ World

NDCs with this rating fall well outside of a country’s “fair share” range and are not at all consistent with holding warming to below 2°C let alone with the Paris Agreement’s stronger 1.5°C limit. If all government NDCs were in this range, warming would exceed 4°C.

Highly insufficient< 4°C World

NDCs with this rating fall outside of a country’s “fair share” range and are not at all consistent with holding warming to below 2°C let alone with the Paris Agreement’s stronger 1.5°C limit. If all government NDCs were in this range, warming would reach between 3°C and 4°C.

Insufficient< 3°C World

NDCs with this rating are in the least stringent part of a country’s “fair share” range and not consistent with holding warming below 2°C let alone with the Paris Agreement’s stronger 1.5°C limit. If all government NDCs were in this range, warming would reach over 2°C and up to 3°C.

2°C Compatible< 2°C World

NDCs with this rating are consistent with the 2009 Copenhagen 2°C goal and therefore fall within a country’s “fair share” range, but are not fully consistent with the Paris Agreement long term temperature goal. If all government NDCs were in this range, warming could be held below, but not well below, 2°C and still be too high to be consistent with the Paris Agreement 1.5°C limit.

1.5°C Paris Agreement Compatible< 1.5°C World

This rating indicates that a government’s NDCs in the most stringent part of its “fair share” range: it is consistent with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C limit.

Role model<< 1.5°C World

This rating indicates that a government’s NDC is more ambitious than what is considered a “fair” contribution: it is more than consistent with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C limit.

Global Warming Potentials

Previous assessments of the Climate Action Tracker used the global warming potentials (GWPs) from the IPCC’s Second Assessment Report (SAR). For this assessment we have updated all figures and time series to GWPs from the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4).

Historical emissions

Historical emissions levels are taken from the inventory data submitted to the UNFCCC until the last available year, here 2016 (Russian Federation, 2018).

Pledge

Targets for all years are calculated using national inventory submissions (UNFCCC, 2017). For 2030 we assume that LULUCF emissions are included in the pledge. For 2020, we calculate two estimated targets for emissions: including and excluding the LULUCF emissions sector.

To quantify the pledges including LULUCF sector accounting, we use sectoral emission projections from the Third Biennial Report to the UNFCCC (Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, 2017). We also calculate the national accounting quantities for afforestation, reforestation and deforestation using the current LULUCF Kyoto rules. For forest management we use 1990 as reference level.

Current policy projections

The upper limit of current trend projections for 2030 is based on the World Energy Outlook 2018 Current Policy scenario projections for CO2 from fuel combustion until 2030 (IEA, 2018), the US EPA non-CO2 (US EPA, 2012) emission projections until 2030 and extrapolation of the historical trend for other CO2 emissions. We also quantify the flaring limit and renewable electricity generation targets. The World Energy Outlook 2018, however, no longer provides the list of policies considered in the projections, so that it is not clear which current policies are considered.

For the Renewable Energy target we assume a 2.5% targets for 2020, which is referenced in multiple energy national documents such as Resolution No. 512-r on the State Program of Energy Efficiency and the Development of the Energy Sector (IFC Advisory Services, 2013), and is in line with capacity-based targets of adding 3600 MW of wind power, 1520 MW of solar power and 751 of small scale hydro power over the period 2014–2020 outlined in Resolution No. 861 and referred to in Decree No. 449 on the Mechanism for the Promotion of Renewable Energy on the Wholesale Electricity and Capacity Market (Russian Federation, 2013b) (Russian Federation, 2013a).

For the flaring gas limit we quantify the implementation of the 95% limit included in the 2009 Decree on Measures to Stimulate the Reduction of Air Pollution from Associated Gas Flaring Products. To reflect the high uncertainty around future emissions from flaring in Russia and the large margin of underachievement of the limit observed in recent years we assume a conservative scenario of effectiveness of this policy, with projected flaring emissions stagnating at 2012 levels. Mitigation from limiting flaring is calculated using historical flaring data from NOAA (2011), historical oil production data from (IEA, 2014) and projections for oil production of the BP energy outlook (BP, 2014).

The lower limit of current trend projections in 2030 is based on the “with measures” scenario of Russia's Third Biennial Report (Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, 2017) and was estimated applying emissions projected growth rates to historical emissions data, for harmonisation purposes. Until 2020, this scenario is higher than the one estimated based on the latest World Energy outlook, but after 2020 it is lower. In our current policy projections we show the full range of emissions under both pathways projections.