Interfax publishes rating of Russian regions by environmental, energy efficiency of businesses for 2016

Interfax Information Services Group has published its 2016 rating of Russian regions in terms of environmental efficiency and sustainable development.

The rating was carried out by the Interfax-ERA environmental and energy rating agency on the basis of the environmental and energy efficiency performance of companies operating in those regions. The top regions in the 2016 rating are the Novgorod region and the republics of Chuvashia and Udmurtia.

"They are leaders not just due to the size of their economies but due to their ability to the use the resources at their disposal successfully and carefully," said Alexander Martynov, the head of Interfax-ERA.

"Regions were put into three groups due to the differences in their economic complexes by level and specific aspects of development," Martynov said. The leader among the regions grouped by high investment appeal is the Republic of Tatarstan; the leader of those regions grouped by fiscal capacity is the Kaluga region; and the leading regions among those with low transport accessibility and poorly developed infrastructure are the Republic of Buryatia, the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District and Republic of Komi.

The rating is calculated on the basis of five fundamental efficiency criteria for the businesses located in regions, taking sector-specific differences in their manufacturing methods into consideration.

Regions are ranked for each of these criteria and the final ranking is determined according to the sum of their places in the five separate rankings: environmental impact; energy and resource expenditure; losses to the sustainability of ecosystems; energy and resource expenditure per unit of output; and transparency.

As for individual criteria, the best region in terms of energy efficiency was the Republic of Udmurtia; the best for technological efficiency was the Belgorod region; a combination of the high sustainability of natural ecosystems and low intensity of environmental impact ensured the Altai Republic‘s leadership for the ecosystem efficiency criterion; the best rate of technological modernization, or eco-efficiency, was seen at businesses in the Kaliningrad region; and businesses in the Vologda region had the most transparent environmental reporting.

The full version of the rating can be found at http://interfax-era.ru/reitingi-regionov/2016

The approach used by Interfax-ERA organically complements and elaborates energy efficiency assessments by the Russian Energy Ministry. The Energy Ministry‘s rating focuses on state energy efficiency policy in the public sector of the economy, while Interfax-ERA‘s rating is based on a comparison of the industrial side of the economies of regions.

Environmental and energy efficiency ratings are a new sectoral and regional administrative tool, which makes possible an independent assessment of progress with technological upgrades and the fulfillment of sectoral and regional energy efficiency programs; and to verify expert opinions about the efficiency of federal and regional government bodies.