Save for later Print Download Share LinkedIn Twitter Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak told an online conference this week that renewables could account for 10% of the country's energy mix by 2040, compared with only 1% today. He told the International Financial Congress that the government was looking at ways to stimulate private investment in renewable energy, including solar and wind power. Novak was Russia's energy minister from 2012-20 and continues to oversee the country's energy policy in his current position. In their public comments, Russia's political leaders generally continue to emphasize the primacy of oil and gas in meeting the world's energy needs (IOD Apr.6'20). But over the last year or so they have started to talk more about developing low-carbon energy and lowering greenhouse gas emissions (NC Jun.10'21). For example, Deputy Energy Minister Pavel Sorokin has talked about Russia seeking to gain a 20% market share of the global trade in hydrogen by 2030 (IOD Apr.16'21). There are also tentative plans to make Sakhalin Island -- an important oil and gas production hub in Russia's Far East -- carbon neutral in the longer term (IOD Jan.20'21). But on the whole, Russia has not fully embraced the notion of a transition away from fossil fuels and is mainly focused on defending its position as one of the world's biggest producers and exporters of oil and gas. Moscow is particularly concerned that Russia could be hurt by the EU's plans to impose a "carbon border tax" on imports of products from countries with weak climate change mitigation policies (IOD Jul.9'20). Speaking during the same online conference as Novak, the chairman of Russia's Sberbank, German Gref, said Russia could indeed face serious economic consequences if it doesn't step up its decarbonization game. Failure to get up to speed could reduce the country's growth rate by 1.1 percentage points a year and result in more than $4 trillion of lost export revenues by 2050, he suggested. To avoid such a scenario, Russia would need to invest some $660 billion to $1 trillion in decarbonization initiatives, Gref added. Nadezhda Sladkova, Moscow
