News

The International Energy Agency has released a new report World Energy Outlook 2011 on the evaluation of the realities and prospects of world energy. Russia has once again taken its place in the energy "crowd": no hopes, no expectations.

The Energy Industry Expo 2011 Forum held in Yekaterinburg witnessed the concept of distributed energy system in the Sverdlovsk region. Representatives of regional authorities and of environmental organizations are sure that distributed network and renewable energy shall replace the excessively centralized energy system in the Urals.

Since January 1, all airlines flying over the EU territory will pay for greenhouse gas emissions from aircraft engines. This rule takes effect despite the opposition of the Russian air carriers and dissatisfaction of the Russian government. On December 21, the European Court upheld the collection of quotas.

In a short time energy technologies will change beyond recognition. This is the opinion of participants of the seminar "Technological vectors in the energy sector and the prospects for the venture technology business" held in Moscow. Experts in the field of business and power see not only technological but also economic incentives for renewable energy development in Russia.

Representatives of Russian NGOs who were following the course of the UN climate talks in Durban would like to emphasize the following.
Having in mind the complexity of the negotiations as well as differences in economical, political and environmental situation in the countries, we see the resulting Durban Package and the decision to have the second commitment period of Kyoto Protocol as a partial success, a step towards a new global agreement. However, bearing in mind the current trends of global warming, we express our deep concern about the adoption of a new agreement in 2020, which might come too late to hold the temperature growth within 2 degrees and will fail to avert the irreversible climate changes.

Worldwide, the problem of reducing greenhouse gas emissions is solved by fast growth of renewable energy. Transport is responsible for almost one third of global greenhouse gases emissions. However, the use of RE in autonomous vehicles is a technical challenge. Therefore, all the more surprising is the progress that was demonstrated in recent years. The year 2011 marked ten years of successful commercial navigation of the world biggest solar-powered catamaran MobiCat. Russia lags behind in this matter, and it is necessary to pay special attention to transport sector in development programmes for RE.

By the end of the first period of the Kyoto Protocol Russian "carbon stock" will be about 6 billion tons of CO2 equivalent, which in case of non-participation in the second period will simply return to zero. The volume of non-received climatic resources of the country in case of suspension of the Joint Implementation projects (JIPs) since 2013 is estimated at about 1-1.5 billion dollars.

Russia’s refusal to be part of Kyoto-2 implies a lot of losses for our country – for the federal budget, the society and for the environment. But there is an already existing JI mechanism which might be very successfully integrated into Russia’s climate policy, the emissions regulation system in order to stimulate environmental investments into energy efficiency and resource saving projects.

Ministry of Energy sent for review to the federal bodies of executive power the project of "a series of measures to stimulate production of electric power generation facilities that operate through the use of renewable energy sources." Experts believe that the measures proposed by the Ministry of Energy will have no effect without real reform of the electricity market for renewable energy.

Several decisions on the LULUCF within the framework of the Kyoto Protocol were taken at the UN Climate Conference in Durban, South Africa, the full stop in the discussion has not been set yet. Representatives of the environmental NGOs believe that the new scandalous proposal of classifying all forest fires as natural ones may let Russia relax about its less than perfect legislation and forest management practices.