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from the Nizhne-Bureiskaya hydro plant to the Amur gas chemical complex. The agreement is for 300MW of green energy supplies with a tenor of 20 years. According to the press release, the agreement envisages 'additional profitability' for RusHydro. The demand for low-carbon electricity hasoomed in the last 12 months in Russia, with the total volume of supplied contracts approaching 7GW at the beginning of the year and showing triple-digit growth year-to-date. We estimate that Russia currently has plenty of low-cost, or even negative, CO2 price decarbonisation options for industrial consumers, ranging from bilateral contracts to guaranteed return renewable DPM projects (see our Electric Utilities – Guide to Scope 2 decarbonisation). RusHydro is rapidly emerging as one of the key suppliers of green energy, having previously signed similar large-scale contracts with Polyus and planning to launch the sale of I-REC green certificates as soon as 2022. Although the total volume of energy sold under green contracts remains limited at this point, while greeniums are unlikely to exceed 1-2% to the day-ahead electricity price, in the long run we expect RusHydro toenefit substantially from the premia which consumers are ready to pay for low-carbon electricity in Russia.
RusHydro and H2 Clean Energy (100% ownedy Pavel Grachev, the CEO of Polyus) have signed a cooperation agreement, which envisages conducting a feasibility study about the construction of new hydro plants to supply green hydrogen. Elsewhere, Anton Moskivin, Rosatom’s Vice President for Marketing and business Development, has announced that the nuclear giant is planning to launch hydrogen production by 2024 and make its first export shipments in 2025. According to him, the company intends to finish the feasibility study of a hydrogen plant with production capacity 30,000 tonnes (scalable up to 100,000 tonnes) at Sakhalin in coordination with French company Air Liquide by the end of the current year, with the goal of supplying hydrogen to Japan. Some utilities companies are adopting a more proactive approach to the green transformation of theirusinesses, giving them a head start in what we see as the future of the Russian power industry in the next 20 years.oth RusHydro and Rosatom are clear leaders in the field, commissioning renewable capacities (small hydro for RusHydro, wind parks coupled with own wind equipment production for Rosatom) and exploring new areas of future demand (EV charge point networks, hydrogen,batteries).
InterRAO CEO Boris Kovalchuk, answering a journalist question on the possibility of acquiring Unipro, announced that the company is ready for such purchase: "If they wish so [to sell the asset - VTBC], we are always happy to negotiate. We have the required financial resources", Interfax reported. Kovalchuk added that if any asset in the sector is put on sale, the company would readily consider such an acquisition,ut only at the market price. Acquiring Unipro would be a straightforward way to put InterRAO’s cash position to productive use. The cash pile is currently valued by the market at zero, as reflected in InterRAO's market valuation of EV/EBITDA of 0.7x. At the
139 RUSSIA Country Report October 2021 www.intellinews.com