Medvedev: Russia will follow up climate obligations

Medvedev said that Russia will meet its previously announced objective to cut climate gas emissions by 25 percent compared with the 1990 level by year 2020, a press release from the president’s press service reads.

-We intend to deal with energy efficiency and with the reduction of emissions irrespectively of an international agreement, the president said. –This benefits us both from an economical and environmental point of view, he added.

Public awareness

The president also called for a higher level of public awareness of the climate issues and said that this is a task for the federal government as well as for local authorities.

-We must to the biggest possible extent talk about these problems in the public sphere, he argued.

The role of industry

He also stressed that big industry and businesses must feel an interest in the climate issues. Without that, nothing will come out of this, he argued. -Our task is to act in a way which makes business feel this interest, he added.

The meeting was attended by a number of prominent cabinet ministers and federal official, among them Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Minister of Economical Development Elvira Nabiullina, Energy Minister Sergey Shmatko, Natural Resource Minister Yuri Trutnev, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov and Head of the Presidential Administration Arkady Dvorkovich.

Contradicting trends

The Russian ambitions on emission cuts will however be confronted by the country’s continued dependency of oil and gas production. Thus, the new Russian Energy Strategy adopted late last year reads that Russia by year 2030 will have boosted its gas production by up to 42 percent and its oil production by almost 10 percent.

As BarentsObserver reported, the production of alternative energy is to increase too, and will by 2020 amount to 4,5 percent of the country’s energy generation. Only after 2022, will Russia make alternative energy a top priority, the document reads.