At the heart of the meeting was the coordination of work between government agencies,
The government discussed measures aimed ata trajectory of sustainable low-carbon development. The authorities supported the draft law on limiting greenhouse gas emissions. On the basis of this document, a system of state accounting and implementation of projects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase their absorption will appear.
In their blog, Greenpeace Russia stated thatwelcomes the fact that the country has at least begun to discuss carbon neutrality at the government level. The problem, however, is that in order to achieve the goal of zero emissions, the authorities are proposing to use environmentally hazardous technologies and solutions that will bring even more problems.
In particular, at the meeting Alexander Novakstated: “We need to have a clear understanding of each industry. As for the fuel and energy complex, our low-carbon fuel and energy balance is our obvious, but not yet used advantage. For example, the share of environmentally friendly nuclear power plants and hydroelectric power stations accounts for up to 40% of Russian electricity generation. Considering that exported goods consume only 20% of all electricity produced, we can at least provide confirmation of the purity of the products sold for export. The forest resource also remains our additional advantage.”
However, when it comes to large hydroelectric power plants, there areserious doubts about their "low carbon". The fact is that greenhouse gas emissions from some large hydropower plants are comparable to emissions from fossil fuel-fired facilities. Hydropower provides approximately 1 billion tonnes of CO₂-eq. emissions per year. This is equivalent to 2.7% of global greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels in 2018. In addition, large hydroelectric power plants lead to the degradation of river ecosystems, the disappearance of populations of economically important and rare fish.
As for nuclear power, focusing on it won't help deal with the climate crisis.The reason is simple - it is not carbon neutral, its safety is questionable, and it also costs much more than renewable energy sources. In addition, nuclear power plants take a long time to build and are vulnerable to the climate crisis.
The idea of the authorities to take into account the absorbing capacity of Russian forestsalso raised questions fromrepresentatives of Greenpeace in Russia. Right now there is no reliable data in the country that would allow us to calculate this ability. Forest management materials (the traditional system of forest assessment and planning of economic activities) with an unexpired statute of limitations are available for only 1/7 of Russian forests. At the same time, the attempt to create a state forest inventory system, undertaken in 2007-2020, can be considered a failure, Greenpeace is confident. The problem of protecting almost half of the forests from fires remains unresolved. As you know, in Russia there are zones where it is officially allowed not to put out fires. In addition, now, on the one hand, the Ministry of Natural Resources is announcing the possibility of including forests on agricultural lands in the methodology for accounting for absorption, and on the other hand, it actually wants to prohibit people from engaging in forestry on such lands.
Another problem is that the existingThe bill on state regulation of greenhouse gas emissions so far only involves their monitoring without mandatory restrictions and setting targets for economic sectors, which cannot lead to a real contribution to the fight against global climate change, Greenpeace experts conclude.
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