• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
  FEATURED
BP Predicts Faster Oil and Gas Decline as Clean Energy Spending Hits $1.1T in 2022 January 31, 2023
Canada Needs Oil and Gas Emissions Cap to Hit 2030 Goal: NZAB January 31, 2023
Ecuador’s Amazon Drilling Plan Shows Need for Fossil Non-Proliferation Treaty January 31, 2023
Rainforest Carbon Credits from World’s Biggest Provider are ‘Largely Worthless’, Investigation Finds January 31, 2023
Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing January 23, 2023
Next
Prev

Remote Russian Region Aims for Net-Zero Emissions by 2025

February 24, 2021
Reading time: 3 minutes

Btibbets/Wikipedia

Btibbets/Wikipedia

5
SHARES
 

Possibly signalling a (slow) shift in Vladimir Putin’s unambitious climate agenda, the far east Russian island region of Sakhalin has declared its intent to achieve net-zero emissions by 2025.

Russian Economic Development Minister Maxim Reshetnikov said Sakhalin’s net-zero plan “will allow us to try various measures to regulate carbon and evaluate their effectiveness, for later scaling up at the national level,” the Thomson Reuters Foundation reports, citing an official release.

  • The climate news you need. Subscribe now to our engaging new weekly digest.
  • You’ll receive exclusive, never-before-seen-content, distilled and delivered to your inbox every weekend.
  • The Weekender: Succinct, solutions-focused, and designed with the discerning reader in mind.
New!
Subscribe

The roadmap includes carbon trading, promoting EVs, developing renewables and green hydrogen, and adding more natural gas to its coal-heavy energy mix. Reshetnikov expressed hope that “investors interested in ‘green’ projects, and companies willing to take on more ambitious climate targets, will be motivated to participate.”

Russian environmental activists are expressing surprise and encouragement at the “unexpected experiment,” Thomson Reuters writes. At present, Sakhalin’s economy is heavily dependent on fossil fuel extraction, and on coal exports in particular—making carbon emissions trading a critical factor in achieving the net-zero target.

While the Kremlin has been lethargic in its approach to the climate crisis, including the development of a national carbon price, it has given the go-ahead for the North Pacific island territory to proceed with its own pilot carbon trading scheme, a first for the country.

To that end, the regional government of Sakhalin plans to complete an inventory of both its emissions and the carbon sequestration potential of its vast taiga forests and boglands by August. The plan is to launch the trading system by mid-2022.

Sakhalin authorities will also be seeking to persuade a significant percentage of its 500,000 citizens to embrace EVs. Aiding this quest: “tax breaks, charging stations, and dedicated parking lots for electric vehicles, alongside a ban on all petrol and diesel cars by 2035.”

Sakhalin Deputy Prime Minister Vyacheslav Alenkov told Thomson Reuters his region is also pursuing both the technologies and the investors necessary to develop renewable energy, with small-scale hydro, wind and solar, and geothermal all strong contenders based on the geography of the region. 

Switching coal-fired power plants to natural gas and establishing a hydrogen-fuelled passenger train system are also in the cards, as is promoting sustainable management of the region’s taiga forests.

Moscow still has a long way to go on climate policy and programming. Vladimir Chuprov, head of Greenpeace Russia’s energy program, told Thomson Reuters the country is “10 to 15 years behind global trends in regulating carbon emissions.”

Such tardiness owes to Russia’s low emissions targets, which in turn are linked to heavy lobbying from the country’s mammoth fossil sector. And with little asked of industry in the way of reductions, there is no demand for offsets—which means in turn that there is no appetite for a national carbon market. 

This roadblock is apparent in Moscow’s draft of new legislation on the subject, Thomson Reuters notes. The regulation includes neither a carbon tax nor an emissions trading system and, correspondingly, “does not foresee reaching carbon-neutrality any time before mid-century.”

Fossil lobbying is also at work behind the scenes of Sakhalin’s experiment. Alexey Kokorin, director of WWF-Russia’s climate and energy program, said the region’s net-zero plan is taking shape “because oil and gas companies in the region, including Shell, are keen to shrink their carbon footprint and start producing carbon-neutral LNG.”



in Asia, Climate & Society, Coal, Community Climate Finance, COP Conferences, Ending Emissions, Energy / Carbon Pricing & Economics, Fossil Fuels, Jurisdictions, Oil & Gas, Sub-National Governments

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

Mike Mozart/Flickr
Ending Emissions

BP Predicts Faster Oil and Gas Decline as Clean Energy Spending Hits $1.1T in 2022

January 31, 2023
328
Gina Dittmer/PublicDomainPictures
Canada

Canada Needs Oil and Gas Emissions Cap to Hit 2030 Goal: NZAB

January 31, 2023
196
CONFENIAE
Ending Emissions

Ecuador’s Amazon Drilling Plan Shows Need for Fossil Non-Proliferation Treaty

January 31, 2023
61

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

Mike Mozart/Flickr

BP Predicts Faster Oil and Gas Decline as Clean Energy Spending Hits $1.1T in 2022

January 31, 2023
328
jasonwoodhead23/flickr

Canada, U.K., U.S. Must Cut Oil and Gas 76% by 2030 to Keep 1.5° Alive, New Analysis Finds

March 23, 2022
506
Joshua Doubek/Wikipedia

No New Jobs Came from Alberta’s $4B ‘Job Creation’ Tax Cut for Big Oil

October 6, 2022
502
EcoAnalytics

Albertans Want a Just Transition, Despite Premier’s Grumbling

January 23, 2023
325

Recent Posts

Gina Dittmer/PublicDomainPictures

Canada Needs Oil and Gas Emissions Cap to Hit 2030 Goal: NZAB

January 31, 2023
196
CONFENIAE

Ecuador’s Amazon Drilling Plan Shows Need for Fossil Non-Proliferation Treaty

January 31, 2023
61
Ken Teegardin www.SeniorLiving.Org/flickr

Virtual Power Plants Hit an ‘Inflection Point’

January 31, 2023
125
/snappy goat

Rainforest Carbon Credits from World’s Biggest Provider are ‘Largely Worthless’, Investigation Finds

January 31, 2023
94
Victorgrigas/wikimedia commons

World Bank Climate Reforms Too ‘Timid and Slow,’ Critics Warn

January 31, 2023
42
Doc Searls/Twitter

Guilbeault Could Intervene on Ontario Greenbelt Development

January 31, 2023
132
Next Post
Coastal GasLink/Twitter

Coastal GasLink Costs Rise as B.C. Flags Environmental Impacts Along Pipeline Route

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}