On a Pacific Island, Russia Tests Its Climate Change Combat Plan


SAKHALIN ISLAND, Russia — Sixteen wind turbines will be installed between the winding shores and forested hills of this Russian island in the Pacific, creating a larger wind park than currently exists in the vast expanses of the country’s Far East.

More of the clean energy produced by the new wind park will go to coal mining.

Russia scrambles to retain the wealth and power that comes from selling fossil fuels to the world, although the Kremlin is increasingly recognizing climate change as a man-made crisis, the country still has more to address.

Last week, President Vladimir V. Putin said that Russia will stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by 2060. It has been a remarkable turnaround for Mr. Putin’s long disregard for climate science and for many in his country to see international efforts to combat global warming as part of global warming. A Western plan to weaken Russia. His announcement came two weeks before world leaders met in Glasgow. important UN climate summit.

But it is unclear whether Russia is sincere in its new commitment. Russian energy experts and government officials agree that the moves are largely driven by the economy, and the European Union’s tariff plans for heavily polluting countries threaten exports from Russia, which is the fourth largest country in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. Some elements of Russia’s plans have led to skepticism, including relying heavily on forests as a means to absorb carbon dioxide.

And the country continues to invest in producing more oil, gas and coal, doubling down an industry that allows the Kremlin to profit during a global energy crisis and leverage its main client, Europe.

Russia’s climate contradictions are on display on the 600-mile-long island of Sakhalin, just north of Japan. The relatively rich region of 500,000 people is rich in hydrocarbons, the backbone of its economy. But the regional government pledged last year to make Sakhalin Russia’s first “carbon neutral” region by 2025 as carbon-absorbing as it emits from the air.

Sakhalin’s plan shows that natural gas Less polluting than coal and absorbing carbon, forests will be key to Russia’s approach to reducing its net emissions.

“We don’t want to do anything to stop the development of your companies,” said Valery Limarenko, governor of Sakhalin, at a recent oil and gas conference on the island, toasting a hotel ballroom filled with Russian energy executives. sushi and raw mollusks. “We go to sea together, we can see the harbor and we know where we are going.”

For now, Sakhalin’s plans to achieve its goal of being carbon neutral, which include emissions trading, hydrogen energy, renewable power plants and the development of carbon “nests”, mainly exist on paper. But they are indicative of changing dynamics in a country where temperatures are rising more than twice the global average.

“Probably the most important thing happening in Russia right now is the convergence of a certain consensus on climate change,” Dmitri N. Peskov, Putin’s special envoy for technological development, said in an interview. “In the last half year, it has become clear that Russia is at the center of changes in the climate.”

Most of Sakhalin is covered with majestic spruce and fir forests. They tell the story of Russia’s role in tackling climate change and its vulnerability to it.

According to the government, forests on Sakhalin already absorb 11 million of the 12 million metric tons of carbon emitted by human activities, making the carbon neutrality goal attainable with relatively small reductions in emissions.

According to a draft government strategy seen by the New York Times, Russia plans to more than double the amount of carbon absorbed by its vast forests nationwide by 2050. Some of this increase would come from fighting wildfires and changing forestry practices. But it could also be due to changing how this absorption is calculated using “modern mathematical models based on neural networks and artificial intelligence”, which has led to the skepticism of environmentalists.

“The problem is that these figures are not based on any reliable data or research,” said Vasily Yablokov, a Greenpeace Russia climate expert.

In the forests of Sakhalin there are more and more gloomy spots of lifelessness. The bark of gray, dead, tall trees is pierced by tiny pinholes: traces of the European spruce bark beetle.

The beetle’s population has exploded in recent years. Pacific typhoons are hitting more and more north, reaching Sakhalin, where they knock down huge areas of trees that lack the natural defenses of living trees and become food for bark beetles. The higher temperatures helped the insects multiply.

According to Kirill Korznikov, a botanist of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, at least 30,000 acres of spruce on Sakhalin have already been killed by beetles. Dying forests in turn damage Sakhalin’s fragile river ecosystems, threaten future salmon stocks and reduce the amount of carbon absorbed from the atmosphere.

“We have never experienced such storms, we have never had so many insects,” Mr. Korznikov said. “But people don’t fully understand how these phenomena are linked to changes in climate.”

Mr. Putin has long dismissed the scientific consensus that human activity is responsible for warming the planet. on the contrary, he said In 2018, climate change could be caused by “cosmic changes, a kind of shift in the galaxy invisible to us.”

Then, last year, Catastrophic oil spill in Siberia The tipping of a diesel tank from thawing permafrost underlined the particular danger that global warming poses to infrastructure in Russia. Two-thirds of the country’s land is covered with frozen soils. This year, for the third summer in a row, Siberians faced the worst forest fires they can remember. fueling their anger at the government.

“Why did nature go crazy?” A television viewer asked Mr. Putin about his annual call schedule in June.

“Many rightly believe that this is primarily connected with human activities, with polluting emissions into the atmosphere,” Putin said.

Two weeks later, the European Union announces plans for carbon cap tax Imports from countries that do not take steps that they consider sufficient to reduce greenhouse gas emissions Analysts, Imports from Russia estimatedwould be the hardest blow.

Dinara Gershinkova, a former Kremlin official who oversees Sakhalin’s climate efforts, said international pressure is a “real lever” forcing Russia to cut emissions. He said he’s been “totally crazy” for the past two years as companies with foreign investors seek advice on how to meet international environmental standards.

According to its current plans, Russia will fulfill its commitment to reduce its emissions by 30 percent compared to 1990 levels by 2030 as part of the Paris climate agreement, but its emissions may still increase in the coming years.

But there are signs that Russia will revise its plans to be more ambitious. The government’s draft climate strategy calls for Russia to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 79 percent by 2050. The document states that making a meaningful contribution to the global fight against climate change will “promote a positive image of Russia in the world and promote development. foreign trade relations.”

Russia will likely bring its own demands to the climate summit in Glasgow. Officials include international recognition of carbon capture projects being undertaken in Russia and the “green” treatment of nuclear and hydroelectric power on a par with wind and solar power. It is even hoped that Western countries may ease sanctions to reward Russia for taking a more constructive stance.

“A mutual enemy is merging,” said Mr Peskov, the Kremlin envoy. “Russia has a set of keys to solving the problem of global warming, which is very difficult to solve without us.”

Yet there is a more difficult side to Russia’s rising stance: the notion that Europe and the United States have more to lose with low-lying coastal cities than Russia, What benefits does it see Trading and farming at the melting of the Arctic and higher temperatures.

“In the long run, there is no doubt that we are the beneficiary when it comes to climate change,” Peskov said. (No affiliation with Kremlin spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov.)

In Sakhalin, the regional government’s plan for carbon neutrality indicates that the authorities will try to preserve the existing fossil fuel industries for as long as possible. The island is one of the Pacific’s largest oil and gas production centers, with investors like Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil.

Aleksandr Medvedev, one of the directors of state-owned energy giant Gazprom, promised at the Sakhalin conference last month that natural gas would be “key in the global energy mix even by the end of this century.”

Natural gas emits about half the carbon dioxide of coal, but still creates planet-warming pollution, and pipelines are vulnerable to leaks of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.

Still, as part of their efforts for lower emissions, Sakhalin officials are encouraging car owners to change their engines to run on natural gas. The government covers the cost up to $2,000 and says the fuel is twice as cheap as regular gasoline. At gas filling stations operated by Gazprom, customers are required to stay several meters away from their cars for their own safety after attaching the hissing hood to a makeshift valve under the hood.

“Environmentally friendly fuel means caring for the future!” Says advertisements about public transport in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.

Natural gas is also planned to replace the large number of coal-burning municipal heating plants scattered across the island.

And Sakhalin’s thriving coal industry is not going anywhere either.

Sakhalin’s leading coal miner, East Mining Company, has tripled its annual output to 12 million tons in the last five years and promised to continue growing. Coal prices in the company’s Asian export markets are soaring amid the global energy crisis.

The head of the company, Oleg Misevra, said that the threat of climate change “forces humanity to unite and take radical measures”. In East Mining’s case, that means installing a 67-megawatt wind farm to power its open-pit coal mining operations; installed wind monitoring equipment last month to find a suitable location. Mr. Yablokov of Greenpeace described the plans as “totally surreal”.

“Wind turbines need to replace fossil fuels rather than supplement them,” said Mr Yablokov.

Doğu Madencilik refused interview requests. In the mining town of Uglegorsk, near the company’s main operations, there is little faith in its environmental commitments. Debris from the coal mine collapsed in a massive landslide in July, polluting the area’s water supply, activists say. After the municipal newspaper reported on the disaster, the mayor tried to dismiss the editor-in-chief.

“They’ve learned to say the right words,” said 61-year-old Uglegorsk activist Vladimir Avdeyev as he examined the gray landslide debris that lay in a valley outside the city. “We see works of opposite character.”

Alina Lobzina and Oleg Matsnev contributed to the reporting.



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