Russian Federation

Historical emissions levels are taken from the inventory data submitted to the UNFCCC until the last available year, here 2019 (Government of Russia, 2021). (See ‘COVID-19 impact’ section below for 2020 estimation methodology).

Targets for all years are calculated using national inventory submissions (Government of Russia, 2021). For 2030 we assume that LULUCF emissions are included in the pledge.

To quantify the pledges including LULUCF sector accounting, we use sectoral emission projections from the Fourth Biennial Report to the UNFCCC (Russian Federation, 2019b). 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.

The upper limit of current trend projections for 2030 is based on the “with measures” scenario of Russia’s Fourth Biennial Report (Russian Federation, 2019b).

The lower limit of current trend projections in 2030 is based on the World Energy Outlook 2019 Current Policy scenario projections for CO₂ from fuel combustion until 2030 (IEA, 2019c), the US EPA non-CO₂ (US EPA, 2019) 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 2019 (WEO), however, no longer provides the list of policies considered in the projections, so that it is not clear which current policies are considered. The WEO no longer publishes current policy projections from 2020 onward, so the 2019 emissions projection from WEO 2019 adjusted for gas flaring and renewable energy targets are harmonised with the most recent historical data.

For the Renewable Energy target we assume the 4.5% target for 2024, (Resolution No.861, 2013; Decree No. 449, 2013) as referenced in Governmental resolution No. 512-r of 3 April 2013, is achieved only in 2030 given the lack of progress made towards this target so far (IRENA, 2017).

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 (NOAA, 2011), historical oil production data from (IEA, 2014), and projections for oil production of the BP energy outlook (BP, 2014).

We applied a novel method to estimate the COVID-19 related dip in greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 and the deployment through to 2030. Russian GHG emissions in 2020 are estimated using the 2020 value for total CO₂ emissions from the Global Carbon Project, adjusting industry and energy non-CO₂ emissions from 2019 by multiplying them by the decline in GDP in 2020, and calculating a five-year trend of agriculture and waste non-CO₂ emissions (Global Carbon Project, 2020; Government of Russia, 2021). The uncertainty surrounding the severity and length of the pandemic creates a new level of uncertainty for current and future greenhouse gas emissions. We distil the emission intensity (GHG emissions/GDP) from the pre-pandemic current policy scenario and apply to it most recent GDP projections that take into account the effect of the pandemic. To capture a wide range, we have used more than one GDP projection.

For the post COVID-19 current policies max scenario we have used the 2021 and 2022 GDP growth rates from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Russia analysis from 2021 (IMF, 2021). For the post COVID-19 current policies min scenario we have used the 2021 GDP growth rate in the World Bank Global Economic Prospects 2021, the 2022 GDP growth rate projection from the European Bank for Regional Development 2021 analysis, and the 2023-2026 GDP growth rate projection from the IMF Russia Analysis from 2021 (EBRD, 2021; IMF, 2021; World Bank, 2021). We then use the GDP growth projections until 2030 that were used as a basis for the original pre-pandemic current policy scenarios (BR4 and WEO 2019 CPP).

The CAT uses Global Warming Potential (GWP) values from the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) for all its figures and time series. Assessments completed prior to December 2018 (COP24) used GWP values from the Second Assessment Report (SAR).