Page 27 - bne magazine September 2020 russia melting

bne September 2020 Cover Story I 27
in Environmental Research Letters and goes into a lot of detail.
While the population density of everything east of the Ural mountains – the formal end of Europe – is thin, there has actually been a fair amount of building done in the Asian part of Russia, mostly by the Soviets.
The total value of all these fixed assets
– buildings, factories, pipelines, roads, etc. – in just the nine most at risk regions is $1.29 trillion, or about 17% of Russia’s entire fixed assets, estimates Streletskiy.
Of these assets about a sixth are in immediate danger from the subsidence of the ground if it melts, or just over $250bn worth, or around 7.5% of Russia’s GDP. And the cities are in more danger than the pipelines: in the coming decades about a fifth of this infrastructure and up to half of the housing in the permafrost regions need to be upgraded or rebuilt entirely.
The bottom line is that the worst affected regions will have to spend between 4% and 5% of their gross regional product on repairs and
upgrades and the permafrost meltdown will shave another 1%-2% off Russia’s economic growth for decades to come.
And that is just the problems the Soviet- era cities are getting ready to face.
The far bigger problem which is still largely being ignored is that, according to academic estimates, there is some
1 trillion tonnes of CO2 locked up in
the permafrost – rotting prehistoric vegetation that has been frozen since the time of the dinosaurs. If the ground temperature reaches zero degrees then all that CO2 gas could be released in one go in about 30 years, or sooner, causing an unpredictable climate catastrophe.
Currently the ground temperature is about -3C but it is rising by about one degree a decade. A climate-changing gas time bomb is ticking down and will go off sometime in 2050, causing cataclysmic and irreversible damage if nothing is done to reduce emissions.
Accidents and Artic heat wave
The problems of melting permafrost arrived in Russia this summer, which saw the biggest ecological disaster in the country’s history.
The Kremlin declared a spill of diesel fuel at the power plant of Norilsk Nickel metals major in the Krasnoyarsk region in May a federal emergency.
Melting permafrost caused the collapse of pipelines connecting the CPH-3 combined power and heat plant (CHPP) with the decompressed fuel tank that released over 20,000 tonnes of oil products into two adjacent rivers and the soil.
The spill seeped through into one of the largest lakes in the Pyasino region, linked to the Kara Sea, in an environmental catastrophe. The government fined Norilsk $2bn as a contribution to the costs of the clean-up that is anticipated to take at least a decade.
The second accident was less dramatic and didn't cause any damage, but it is nonetheless a sign of things to come.
The TGK-1 power station on the Far Northwest coast near Murmansk reported on June 9 that two of its hydropower units were flooded after a wave of melted snow hit the power station. No serious damage was done, although the company's personnel were put on high
Study Area: Northern Regions of Russia & Permafrost Extent
Permafrost distribution and administrative division of Russia. The boundaries of nine administrative regions considered in this study are shown in grey. Location of major cities is shown with black circle.
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