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excludes the possibility of any violation. InterRAO highlighted that it had been verifying emissions since 2018 and, as before, including them into its annual reports.
Bashkiria is willing to take part in carbon experiment – like the Sakhalin one.
TASS reported on Saturday 7 August, that the Head of the Bashkiria region, Radii Khabirov, had addressed President Vladimir Putin, to support the region’s application to create a test carbon platform for calculating the carbon balance. This would make it possible to assess monitoring technologies and analyse the carbon capture capacity and storage. Thus, the region is willing to have the same special rules as the Sakhalin region carbon experiment. According to Khabirov, the region possesses the territory and scientific knowledge, and has companies (such as Gazprom) that are willing not only to estimate the carbon footprint, but also to neutralise it. In July, a consortium of Skoltech, the Russian Academy of Science, Bashkir Soda Company and Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat was formed to take part in the pilot project to create a test carbon platform.
We see the news as encouraging. While the result of the Sakhalin carbon trading experiment (approved along with the Law on Emissions in Russia, see our Russian utilities – ESG – MinEconomy proposes RUB 150-2,000/t payment for emissions in Sakhalin, of 6 April) is important on its own for the future of carbon trading in Russia, it now seems that more regions are eager to take part in such pilot projects (as we had expected; see our Russian utilities – ESG – Duma approves Federal Law on emissions, of 21 April). This underscores even more the possibility of CO2 getting a price across Russia as a whole. Thus, those gencos that care about their carbon footprint and develop a renewable portfolio are set to be the winners.
Deputy Prime Minister Yury Trutnev has instructed Russia’s Ministry of Energy and RusHydro to prepare proposals for building HPPs in the country’s Far Eastern Federal District to prevent flooding, energy portal Peretok.ru reported on 13 August. After a large-scale flood in 2013, RusHydro considered options to build four HPPs on the Amur River and its tributaries. The company even signed a preliminary agreement with China Three Gorges Corporation, envisaging the joint development of four flood-controlling HPPs at Nizhny-Zeyskaya (400MW), Selemdzhinskaya (300MW), Gilyuyskaya (462MW) and Nizhny-Nim (600MW). The cost of the projects included in the agreement was estimated at c. RUB230bn. In 2016, HYDR First Deputy CEO George Rizhinashvili announced that the company had decided against building the proposed HPPs. In response to a recent wave of natural disasters
131 RUSSIA Country Report September 2021 www.intellinews.com