Russia postpones funding for second stage of project to build climate monitoring system
MOSCOW. Nov 27 (Interfax) - Financing to carry out the second stage of the project to establish a Russian climate monitoring system has been postponed, the director of the competition, energy efficiency and environment department at the Economic Development Ministry, Irina Petrunina said.
"Unfortunately, not everything worked out like we wanted, because financing for the second stage of the VIP GZ [primary innovation project of national importance] is currently postponed. We're continuing to work with the Russian government to get out of this little financial crisis as quickly as possible, because we've already all felt the importance of the VIP GZ and effectiveness of this activity," Petrunina said at a meeting of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs' (RSPP) Climate Policy and Carbon Regulation Committee.
The Russian president's special representative for climate issues, Ruslan Edelgeriyev said later at the meeting that funding "cannot be allowed to be suspended under any circumstances."
"If it's not possible [to provide financing] in full, we need to at least in minimum amounts, at least to maintain the teams, to maintain the processes that it's counterproductive to interrupt," he said, adding that this refers foremost to ecosystem monitoring processes.
"Furthermore, it is necessary to understand that all the results that we get from the VIP GZ are virtually all applicable in general for sectors. And it's even more important considering that we adopted Article 6 [of the Paris Agreement on an international carbon market]. The data that we get as part of work on the VIP GZ, the methods, standards, technological solutions are all export positions, this is all that will serve Article 6, particularly environmental and climate projects," Edelgeriyev said.
The chairman of the Climate Policy and Carbon Regulation Committee, Andrei Melnichenko told reporters that the first stage of the climate monitoring system project cost about 10 billion rubles and the second stage will cost an estimated 28 billion rubles.
The Russian government approved the project to create a unified national monitoring system for climate-active substances in November 2022. The system is intended to gather data on concentrations of climate-active substances in the atmosphere and their impact on the global and regional climate. The data will be the basis for subsequent management decisions on curbing greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to climate change. The obtained data will be included in national climate reporting (greenhouse gas inventory, biennial reports, national reports, etc.) for international recognition.
The results of the project made it possible to develop national ratios for converting economic and ecosystemic indicators into greenhouse gas emissions. Their application found that net greenhouse gas emissions in Russia are 34% lower than was previously thought based on UN ratios. As a result, it was estimated that savings on decarbonisation will total 3 trillion rubles in 2021 prices for Russia's budget and 4.5 trillion rubles for the Russian economy as a whole.
Petrunina said that the results of the first stage of the climate monitoring system project were presented at the COP29 climate conference in Baku and drew "great interest from foreign experts, including our partners from BRICS countries."