But there are signs that Russia will revise its plans to be more ambitious. The government’s draft climate strategy calls on Russia to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 79 percent by 2050. Making a meaningful contribution to the global fight against climate change, the document notes, “will promote Russia’s positive image in the world, stimulating the development of foreign trade relations.”
Russia will likely bring its demands to the climate summit in Glasgow. These include international recognition of carbon-capture projects carried out in Russia and the treatment of nuclear and hydroelectric power considered “green” on par with wind and solar power, officials said. There is also hope that Western countries may ease sanctions to reward Russia for taking a more constructive position.
“A mutual enemy unites,” said the Kremlin envoy Mr. Peskov. “Russia has a series of keys to solving the problem of global warming, which is very difficult to solve without us.”
Yet there is also a hard edge to Russia’s emerging stance: the idea that Europe and the United States, with their low-lying coastal cities, have more to lose than Russia, one who sees profit For trade and agriculture in the melting Arctic and warmer temperatures.
“In the long term, there is no question that we are the beneficiaries when it comes to climate change,” Peskov said. (He is not related to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry S. Peskov.)
stay on fossil fuels
In Sakhalin, the regional government’s plan for carbon neutrality suggests that officials will try to maintain their existing fossil fuel industries for as long as possible. The island is one of the Pacific’s largest centers for oil and gas production, which includes Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil.
Aleksandr Medvedev, an executive at state-owned energy giant Gazprom, pledged at the Sakhalin conference last month that natural gas “will continue to play an important role in the global energy mix even into the turn of this century.”