Russian

Lawmakers Back
The Nation’s First
Ever Climate Law
By
Dina Khrennikova
April 20, 2021, 2:40 PM GMT+3
Russia's First Climate Law Backed by Lawmakers to Monitor Emissions - Bloomberg

Russia, the world’s fourth-largest polluter and country

often criticized for unambitious climate goals, has
made its first step towards carbon trading and a
detailed monitoring of its greenhouse gas emissions.

The State Duma, the lower chamber of the Russian

parliament, has approved in the first reading the draft
law that creates a framework for climate projects in
the country, and allows to trade carbon units that
result from emission cuts or absorption.

The bill also requires the nation’s largest polluters,

companies that emit the annual equivalent of at least
150,000 tons of CO2, to report their emission levels to
regulators. From 2025, that threshold is to be lowered
to at least 50,000 tons. Pollution monitoring by
company and industry will allow the nation to set
targets for emission cuts, the bill says.

The draft law is “part of our international obligations

within the Paris Agreement, it’s our new climate
policy,” Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said when
presenting it to the government in February. “It’s for
the first time that we are adopting such a regulatory
act.”

The bill still requires two more readings in the Duma

as well as approval from the upper chamber of
parliament and president Vladimir Putin. The economy
ministry, which drafted the law, expects the
regulation to come in force from 2022.

Russia, which joined the Paris Agreement two years

ago, so far has made few steps toward meeting the
accord’s goal of net zero global emissions by 2050,
aiming instead to develop a ‘low-carbon economy’ in
the next three decades. That compares to the
European Union, Japan, or South Korea which target
carbon neutrality by 2050.

According to Putin’s order issued last year, by 2030

Russia is set to reduce its emissions by 70% compared
to its 1990 level. Yet thanks to an economic downturn
in the late 1990s and early 2000s, which led to a
decline in industrial production, Russia is already
comfortably within the target range.
Carbon Tax Plans
However, the nation is alarmed by the EU’s plan of a
cross-border carbon tax, which may affect some of its
key raw-material producers and exporters, including
miners. Their losses may reach as much as $8 billion
every year, according to Russian industry estimates.

Russia’s economy ministry expects the introduction of

carbon-offset trading* will help mitigate any potential
negative effects of cross-border carbon taxes, minister
Maxim Reshetnikov said last week in the Duma during
the discussion of the bill. “It’s important that Russian
carbon units, and consequently lower carbon footprint,
is recognized in the international markets,” he said.

The country aims to begin trialling an emission trading

system in the remote Far East region of Sakhalin next
year, Deputy Economy Minister Ilya Torosov told
Bloomberg in March. The goal is to have the region
become carbon neutral by 2025, Torosov said.

* A carbon offset is a way to reduce unavoidable emissions by funding emissions

reductions in a different location