Russian Climate Change Targets To Spark All-Out Copenhagen Carbon War

Posted on 23. Jun, 2009 by Ross in Europe, Government Policy

Whilst the rest of the world was announcing their intentions of how much carbon dioxide to stop emitting in to the atmosphere, Russia had remained noticeably and ominously quiet. Having kept its cards to its chest longest, the Kremlin finally played its hand on Friday with a target which left other governments open-mouthed for all the wrong reasons.

The Russian government plans to have restrict carbon emissions by 2020 to 10-15% less than their levels in 1990, President Medvedev announced on Russian state television.

However, because Russian heavy industry collapsed with the downfall of the Soviet Union, this target translates as a 30% increase in carbon emissions from 2007 levels.

The target essentially requires Russia to take absolutely no measures to reduce emissions: an annual GDP growth rate of 2.5% would be required to take Russia’s emission levels past this target, giving the country a large amount of leeway for economic expansion without needing to worry about greenhouse gases.

At a point when responsible government officials are trying to find ways of co-operating to achieve emission reductions and carbon-negative growth, both Japan and Russia have now set out their stalls in preparation for the Copenhagen conference in December. Unlike the meagre offering from the Japanese just nine days previous, Russia can point to substantial cuts relative to the accepted 1990 baseline - something which the US will find impossible either to match or to argue against. International acceptance of Russian targets would also enable them easier-to-achieve post-2020 carbon targets, since they would benefit from embarking on the same sort of efficiency drives then as other countries are forced to do now.

The Russian plan for growth without carbon reductions has a strong chance of backfiring, however. Russian companies failing to invest in energy efficiency are likely to find themselves at a competitive disadvantage against more economically-streamlined Western and Chinese manufacturers. Exports of raw materials and basic components will be hit by the requirement of strict European carbon accounting, with companies affected by cap-and-trade legislation making procurement decisions based on carbon footprint as well as price. Consumers will also be less receptive to goods perceived to be linked to more polluting ‘eco-renegade’ countries or with a larger carbon footprint displayed on the labelling.

All this comes at a time when Europe, which has become massively dependant upon unpredictable supplies of Russian natural gas, has come to see investment in renewable and nuclear energy not just as a way of reducing carbon emissions but as a way of reducing Russia’s political and economic influence over the region.

It isn’t just governments and businesses outside of Russia which are plagued by energy problems. This week Swedish furniture giant IKEA filed a lawsuit against a Russian power company for failing to supply