Russian Federation

Contrary to the required peak and decline of emissions needed to achieve the Paris Agreement goal, emissions in the Russian Federation are expected to continue growing until at least 2030. However, Russia’s emissions targets, which use 1990 as a reference, allow national emissions to continue an upward trend without missing its international commitments. According to our latest estimates, currently implemented policies will lead to emissions of between 2.6 and 2.7 GtCO₂e in 2020 and between 2.8 and 3 GtCO₂e in 2030 (both excluding LULUCF), which is 0–4% and 6–14% above 2016 emissions levels, respectively. This represents a decrease in emissions from 1990 levels of 27–29% in 2020 and 20–25% in 2030, all below the national mitigation targets, which allow emissions to grow 6–24% above 2016 levels by 2020 and 15–22% by 2030.

There has been little progress in climate action implementation in the Russian Federation. Yet, in late 2018, the Ministry of Economic Development proposed new draft legislation “On state regulation of emissions and the absorption of greenhouse gases” with a view to making Russian companies more competitive on emissions reductions and inspiring innovation in low-carbon industries (Ministry of Economic Development, 2019). The bill would establish a cap-and-trade system for major carbon emitters by 2025 and require companies to report their emissions (Climate Home News, 2019). It would allow the government to introduce targets for GHG emissions and charge companies for excess emissions, which would feed into the Emission Reduction Support Fund. Despite objections by the Russian Union of Industrialists, the law may be passed by parliament in June 2019 (Kommersant, 2019).

Since 2017, President Vladimir Putin seemed to have taken a U-turn in his public position regarding climate change and the Paris Agreement, returning to a sceptical attitude (CNBC, 2017). Russia’s leadership has stated that it expects long-term risks for the national economy from climate change as well as from the global economic trends resulting from the implementation of the Paris Agreement. This neglects the significant short and medium-term risks that a low-carbon global pathway entails for an economy largely based on the export of fossil fuels and mineral resources (Kokorin & Korppoo, 2017).

These statements have been challenged by the findings of a 900-page report “On the status and protection Environment Russian Federation” of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology, which breaks down the past and future consequences of climate change for the country (Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology of the Russian Federation, 2017). It concludes that Russia is already being hit by the natural disasters and other impacts of climate change, and projects this trend to increase in the future (e.g. heatwaves, widespread forest fires, epidemics, drought, mass flooding and food shortages).

In May 2018, shortly after his re-election to the Russian presidency, Vladimir Putin issued an executive order and a series of decrees with the objective of achieving a technological, environmental, and economic breakthrough over his new term in office. Following the “May decrees” mandate, the Environment Ministry drafted the “Ecology” (Экология) programme focusing on air pollution reduction, reforestation, and improving waste management (Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, 2018). None of the ten directions in the Ecology programme relate directly to GHG emissions reductions, although some could have important synergies with climate change mitigation.

The focus on long-term risks has underpinned the delay in adoption of ambitious climate targets and policies, which has resulted in Russia currently being the only big emitter that has not yet ratified the Paris Agreement. Contrary to what is needed to achieve the agreement’s objective, Russia has presented a national strategy that may delay ratification until at least 2019 (Government of the Russian Federation, 2016).

The strategy, summarised in Order No2344, Nov 2016, includes a number of planned studies of how ratification of the Paris Agreement would affect the national economy, which would have to be ready before the final decision regarding the ratification is taken. The timeline outlined in the decree would result in a draft presidential decree for approving the 2030 emissions targets and a draft of a new Federal Law on Carbon Regulation being prepared as late as in 2019. The timeline does not specify a date for the final version or adoption of the documents, which makes the date of the ratification highly uncertain.

The Russian Action Plan also mandates the drafting of a “low-carbon strategy until 2050” by the end of 2019. However, the feasibility of meeting this deadline for a long-term strategy is questionable, as national regulation requires it to be based on a social and economic development projection and strategy for the same period—and currently these documents are being developed only for the period until 2035 (Kokorin & Korppoo, 2017). In addition, the mandate refers only to drafts, which may contain only principles and approaches, without concrete mitigation measures and GHG targets, which provides a weak basis for progress (Ibid).

With this approach, the Russian economy is at risk of losing global competitiveness in the medium to long term in a market that is moving fast towards the development of low-carbon technologies. While it is more than likely that Russia will achieve its INDC target, this will not require a decrease in GHG emissions from current levels, nor a low-carbon economic development strategy. As shown by the “with additional measures” in Russia’s latest national communication, additional mitigation measures are still needed if emissions were to peak and start declining post-2030 as required by the Paris Agreement.

Afirst step in the right direction would be to speed up the national process for ratification of the Paris Agreement and present a 2030 target which actually foresees emissions reductions beyond the current policy scenario. This would not only be more credible from an international perspective (Korppoo & Kokorin, 2015), but would also facilitate aligning national policy developments with the long-term emission reductions needed to avoid dangerous levels of climate change.

Our current policy projections include the main pieces of Russia’s climate-related legislation, namely the 2009 Climate Doctrine, the Energy Strategy for 2030, the Decree on Measures to Stimulate the Reduction of Air Pollution from Associated Gas Flaring Products, the 2013 Presidential Decree on reduction of GHG emissions, and the 2014 Decree on the Action Plan for 2020, which have a clear focus on energy production and demand. These documents define the main national mitigation targets, which include a 2.5% share of renewables in the power sector for 2020 (excluding large hydro), and a target utilisation rate of 95% for associated petroleum gas by 2012¹.

1 | Since this target has not been met, additional incentives for compliance were added since 2012, being the most recent a payment system (with a multiplying factor) for exceeding the Associated Petroleum Gas flaring limit that came into force in 2015 (Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology of the Russian Federation, 2015). However, multiple exemptions to the limit, including new oilfields, fields with low emissions, and field under maintenance, significantly limit the effectiveness of the flaring limit, with recent data showing vast underachievement of the limit since 2012 and major delays in implementation (Korppoo & Kokorin, 2015).

Russia’s energy s sector accounted for 87.3% of all emissions without LULUCF in 2016 (the last year for which data is available). Despite the delay in the ratification of the Paris Agreement, an increase in renewable energy investments in Russia has been observed recently(IEA, 2017), which will slow emissions growth, independent of the ratification of the Paris Agreement. Between 2016 and 2017, Russia adopted three decrees and orders in the field of energy efficiency and promotion of renewable energy, including a plan of measures to further stimulate the development of generation facilities based on renewable energy sources with installed capacity up to 15 kW (Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, 2017).

Installed renewable power generation capacity increased to approximately 54 GW by the end of 2017, which is equivalent to 21% of the country’s total power generation capacity (IEA, 2017), with hydropower representing the majority of the installed capacity (52 GW).

Under current policy projections, the upward trend in the share of renewable sources in primary energy demand will continue, from around 3.4% in 2016 to 4.3% by 2030 (IEA, 2017). In addition, Russia has a 2.5% Renewable Energy Target for 2020 (excluding large hydro), which we estimate would increase the share of RE sources slightly to 4.4% of primary energy demand by 2030.

This upward trend and the increasing number of regulations promoting renewable energy deployment has been attributed, among others, to the benefits of renewable energy sources in Russia which go beyond emissions mitigation and include contribution to economic growth, diversification of the energy mix, and reduction of energy supply costs in remote areas of the country (IRENA, 2017).

While these recent developments in the renewable energy market are positive for emissions mitigation, they are far from what would be necessary for a fair Russian contribution to global mitigation and also fall short of meaningful exploitation of Russia’s considerable domestic renewable resource. Russia’s potential for energy generation from renewables has been estimated at over 11% of total final energy consumption by 2030, which is significantly higher than the share expected to result in 2030 from implementation of current policies (IRENA, 2017).

Beyond renewables deployment, Russia’s mitigation policies in the energy sector are focussed on energy efficiency. Since it enacted the Climate Doctrine in 2009, Russia has focused on improving its energy efficiency, which is one of the lowest globally, and passed a number of laws to try to achieve a 40% reduction in energy intensity by 2020 below 2007 levels. Some of the measures in place to achieve this target include a State Programme on Energy Efficiency and Savings, efficiency requirements for buildings and structures, a labelling programme for electrical products, mandatory energy audits, among others (see full list here).

Industrial processes and product use and the energy industry in 2016 (the last year for which data is available) made up 12.1% and 45.9% respectively of Russia’s total emissions without LULUCF. The main pieces of regulation in the industrial sector included in our policy projections are the development strategy of Russia's steel industry, including the phase-out of open-hearth furnaces, the Investment Tax Credit for energy-efficient technologies and projects, and the regional energy savings programmes that provides subsidies and governmental guarantees.

Emissions from Russia’s transport sector in 2016 (the last year for which data is available) amounted to 14.7% of total emissions without LULUCF. Measures to curb emissions in the transport sector included in our projections are in line with Russia’s Transport Strategy of 2017 for the period up to 2030 (Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, 2017). This Strategy includes a set of measures to cut CO₂ emissions per tonne-km from road transport by 2030 by 20–25% below 2011 levels (50–53% in rail transport, 20–34% in air transport, and 20–24% in water transport).

Despite the National Transport Strategy, which promotes the use of low-carbon fuels and optimisation of transport infrastructure, emissions from this sector are expected to continue growing in the future.

Our projections include the strategy for development of building materials sector for the period up to 2020 and 2030, adopted by Government Decree №868 from 10 May 2016 (Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, 2017) as estimated in the last official national projections.One of the main targets of this strategy is the improvement of energy efficiency of buildings measured by a 20% reduction of residential heat consumption per m² per year compared to 2014 levels in 2030. It is however uncertain to what extent the official national projections assume a full achievement of the target.

Examples of the measures included in our projections, as estimated by the latest World Energy Outlook, are the Voluntary Labelling Programme for Electrical Products and the Implementation of the Federal Law on Energy Conservation and Energy Efficiency.

Russia’s agricultural sector in 2016 only amounted to 0.3% of total emissions without LULUCF. In the agriculture and forestry sectors, Russia’s approach is based on adaptation instead of mitigation. The government has implemented a series of measures to address negative effects of extreme weather events and disasters, including drought and fires, and is currently working on expanding the scope of its agriculture climate policies to include use of agricultural new technologies, including new forms of nitrogen fertilisers (Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, 2017).

In the forestry sector, Russia’s negative emissions in 2016 equalled 37% of the country’s total emissions excluding LULUCF. The Federal Forestry Agency developed the State Program of forestry development for 2020 (Rosleskhoz, 2013), which includes optimisation practices for afforestation and an improved methodology for risk calculation to minimise the effects of forest and peat fires.

Despite these policies, according to the most recent projections, included in the Third Biennial Report, instead of increasing, the current Forestry net sink will drop to zero over the next 40 years mostly due to the reduction in the absorbing capacity of aging forests (Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, 2017). This decline can be halted only by radical changes in forestry practices and by protecting significant amounts of primary forests from commercial clear-cutting (Kokorin & Korppoo, 2017).

In the draft of the national project “Ecology” (Экология) 115 billion roubles (1.75 billion USD) have been allocated for the “Preservation of Forests”, of which 93 billion RUB (1.4 billion USD) are expected to come from private funds and the main focus of the policy is on deforested forest land restoration(Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, 2018). The impact of these plans on emissions in unclear and has not been included in our current policy projections.

The waste sector only contributed 0.3% to Russia’s total emissions without LULUCF in 2016 (the last year for which data is available). Measures to curb emissions in the waste sector included in our projections are in line with the integrated management strategies for municipal solid waste, adopted through strategic legal documents between 2014 and 2017 (Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, 2017).

In the draft of the national project “Ecology” (Экология) 404 billion RUB (6.1 billion USD) have been allocated for "waste management", of which 284 billion RUB (4.3 billion USD) will be designated for the creation of an integrated waste management system. Other areas include the reclamation of 266 landfills and the creation of infrastructure for hazardous waste management. From this budget, around 200 billion RUB (3 billion USD) are expected to come from private sources (Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, 2018). The impact of these plans on emissions in unclear and has not been included in our current policy projections.