Climate control: How Russia turned environmentalism into a tool of political influence

But in Russia, due to the prejudices of the elite, solar and wind energy are not taken seriously. For instance, Vladimir Putin has stated that wind turbines kill birds, drive worms out of the soil, and that generating sufficient electricity from wind and solar would require covering the planet with a forest of turbines and multiple layers of solar panels.

Presumably out of concern for the worms, Russia has developed its own methods of combating climate change. These include maintaining the “cleanest” energy generation structures established during Soviet times, promoting Russian gas and nuclear reactors globally, advancing discussions about “clean coal,” and proposing plans to absorb greenhouse gas emissions through forests and other ecosystems, including prehistoric ones.

At the 2023 COP28 Climate Summit in Dubai, Russia presented the “Pleistocene Park” experiment, which aims to recreate a mammoth-era ecosystem in the Arctic to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The project is funded by the foundation of coal oligarch Andrey Melnichenko.

In October 2021, just weeks before the COP26 Climate Summit in Glasgow, Putin announced that Russia intended to become carbon-neutral by 2060. This goal was indeed declared at the Glasgow summit and was included in Russia’s “Strategy for Socio-Economic Development with Low Greenhouse Gas Emissions Until 2050” (the “low-carbon development strategy”) adopted on Nov. 1, 2021. However, Russia has demonstrated no real intention of reducing emissions, as evident from its official plans and strategies.

Under Russia’s plan, the “inertial” scenario outlined in the strategy predicts a 19% increase in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 compared to 2019, along with a 25% rise in net emissions (emissions minus absorption). Greenhouse gas absorption levels would remain unchanged from 2019. The “intensive” target scenario envisions a 14% reduction in emissions by 2050 compared to 2019, coupled with a more than twofold increase in absorption. Net emissions would drop by 60%, primarily due to absorption.

Sections of the document on greenhouse gas absorption focus mainly on forests, with brief mentions of carbon storage in soils and absorption by bodies of water. However, scientific research suggests that the carbon absorption capacity of Russian forests is expected to decline.

In 2023, there were discussions about revising the low-carbon development strategy due to Russia’s restricted access to Western technologies. This means that Russia’s emission reduction goals will likely become even less ambitious in the near future, with planned reduction targets adjusted downward accordingly.