It comes as little surprise that there is a reluctance in the oil and gas industry towards a fast phase-out of the fuels. Speaking at a side-event at COP26, Sergey Vakulenko, a representative of one of Russia’s largest oil companies, Gazprom Neft, argued that oil and gas would still be needed even in the new low-carbon economy. Renewables might be enough to cover the majority of demand, he said, but traditional fuels would still be used as a back-up.

Peaking pressure

Some experts question how long Russia’s fossil fuel industry will remain a viable prospect. “Gas, which many are pinning their hopes on as a transitional fuel, will last for 10 to 15 years [as an economically viable fuel],” says Evgeny Kuznetsov, a Russian venture investor and chief executive of Orbita Capital Partners. “This period may not be enough to return investments in new large-scale gas projects.”

But others say the industry is not likely to abate any time soon. Thane Gustafson, professor of political science at Georgetown University in the US and author of the book Klimat: Russia in the Age of Climate Change, expects that world demand for fossil fuels will continue to grow through the 2020s. At the same time, supply constraints arising from decreasing investment in fossil fuels will keep energy prices high, punctuated by periodic spikes in prices, as we are seeing today.

What can be the basis of the new, post-fossil fuel Russian economy?

But in the early 2030s that picture will begin to change, he says, with the influence of climate politics, technological change and the clean energy transition becoming dominant. He expects world demand for oil to peak and begin to decline around this time due to the spread of electric vehicles and political limits on petrochemicals. Renewables will increasingly displace coal, he says, while gas demand will remain high but cease to grow.

“The impact of climate change [action] on Russia over the next 30 years is going to be very largely external,” says Gustafson. “It will rise because of trends and forces that are running outside Russia and over which Russia has in fact very little leverage.”

Changes inside Russia, such as the increasing cost of oil extraction as oil fields deplete, will have some impact, he adds. But the growth of electric vehicles, the continued spread of renewable energy and the progress of green legislation particularly in Europe, such as the European Green Deal, will all put external pressure on Russia, he says.

“Russia has very little control over that,” says Gustafson. “Russia will be a ‘taker’ of world trends, rather than a ‘maker’. And that must be, of course, a difficult realisation.”

This puts Russia in a vulnerable position, says Kuznetsov. He believes that after the current energy crisis, a drop in demand will accelerate Europe’s planned reduction in fossil fuel consumption. The result could be a large number of competitors vying for a shrinking market, driving prices down.

Vladimir Chuprov, a project director at Greenpeace in Russia, agrees that if other countries follow up with real actions on their Paris Agreement pledges, Russia will experience declining demand for coal and oil before 2030. However, in 2050 the Russian economy is still likely to be based on at least some revenue from natural gas exports, he says. Within Russia’s domestic supply, he sees gas, along with nuclear, playing a leading role.

But by 2050, the Russian economy will no longer be able to rely on oil and gas exports and will need to find new sources of income, adds Chuprov. “That would be especially hard for the regional economies,” he says. “People will start migrating within Russia.”

Energy after oil

The question is, what could be the basis of the new, post-fossil fuel economy in Russia?

“This is definitely the billion-dollar – and more – question,” says Anna Korppoo, a research professor at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute in Norway. Korppoo has been researching Russia’s climate policy for more than 10 years and recently co-authored a report on a just transition away from coal in Russia.

There are several contenders that could take the place of fossil fuels in a clean Russian economy. One option would be new sources of energy for export such as renewables, hydrogen or nuclear and potentially even decarbonised fossil energy with carbon capture and storage.

Speaking at Russia’s side-event at COP26, the Russian Ministry of Energy representative Pavel Sorokin touted increasing forest sinks and carbon capture and storage as priorities for the Russian fossil fuel companies, followed by further reduction of emissions.

Sorokinalso emphasised the importance of producing green hydrogen (hydrogen made cleanly by splitting water using an electric current) as well as “blue” hydrogen, which is produced from natural gas but uses carbon capture and storage to attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, scientists have doubts about how sustainable blue hydrogen actually is, warning that greenhouse gas emissions from blue hydrogen can be high, particularly due to the release of fugitive methane. (Read more about the growth of sustainable hydrogen.)

As the world’s largest producer of nuclear power plants, with plans to develop new nuclear technologies for export, Gustafson is optimistic about the prospects for Russia’s nuclear industry. “That has been quite a story – the creation and revival of [the state corporation] Rosatom has led to a very big rise in the construction and sales [of nuclear technologies] outside Russia,” he says. “Russia currently has strong advantages in civilian nuclear technology compared to the United States or France or the UK.”

Environmental activists in Russia, however, are more sceptical about plans to develop nuclear energy further as a climate solution, emphasising that nuclear energy is expensive, and that spent nuclear fuels and waste are currently stored and not further dealt with. The Russian Social Ecological Union has also said that Rosatom and Russian authorities have put pressure on environmental activists, who have faced charges and persecution for anti-nuclear campaigns.

Responding to these claims, a spokesperson for Rosatom says that “Rosatom is open to dialogue and cooperation with different environmental organisations”, and that representatives of Russia’s largest environmental organisations take part in Rosatom’s Public Council.

“Nuclear energy is indispensable for achieving carbon neutral goals,” Rosatom’s spokesperson says, adding that technological solutions to process spent nuclear fuel and turn it into new fuel for nuclear power plants are “at an advanced stage” in Russia. They give the example of Rosatom’s Proryv project, a fast neutron nuclear reactor and a facility to process the spent fuel will be built on the same site. After reprocessing, the spent fuel will be turned into fresh fuel, in a system intended to gradually become independent of external energy supplies.

Nature’s resources

There are many other options besides nuclear for decarbonising Russia’s economy. Kuznetsov says that Russia could become competitive in the production of other low carbon technologies, such as equipment for smart energy grids and new heating systems. Another avenue is agriculture.

“That’s really been a remarkable story for anybody who remembers the state of agriculture in the Soviet period,” says Gustafson. “Right now, Russia is once again the world’s largest exporter of wheat.” Total revenues were about $25bn (£19bn) in 2019, he adds, and Russia aims to increase that to $45bn (£34bn) by 2024 through agricultural reforms. “That seems entirely realistic, or plausible at any rate,” says Gustafson.

Another option could be expanding into sustainable forestry and wood-based products, given its ample woodland resources. Russia is home to more than one-fifth of the world’s forests (approximately 7.6 million sq km/2.9 million sq miles), and the country’s boreal forests, known in Russia as the taiga, represent the largest forested region on Earth, at approximately 12 million sq km (4.5 million sq miles), larger than the Amazon.

Russia is already an exporter of wood and wood products such as sawn wood and veneer sheets, though there has been criticism that these products are not sourced in a sustainable way. But sustainable wood-based packaging and textile materials could become an important new sector for the Russian economy, said Paola Deda, the director of forest, land and housing division at the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, speaking during a forestry-themed event at COP26.

Greenpeace Russia’s Chuprov also sees the potential in sustainable forestry, including use of trees which grew on abandoned agricultural lands in the last decades, following the demise of the Soviet Union. According to Greenpeace estimates, since 1985 around 760,000 sq km (290,000 sq miles – an area larger than France) of former agricultural land suitable for forest growth has been abandoned in Russia for economic reasons.

Much of this abandoned agricultural land (around 500,000 sq km/190,000 sq miles) could be used for diverse kinds of forestry, according to Greenpeace. Around 60% of that land is already overgrown with forests, but Greenpeace argues the remainder could be used to grow more trees.

Forests growing on former agricultural land are one of the most important resources for the potential development of rural areas, through the creation of jobs and the sustainable production of economically valuable timber, according to a recent study published by a Paris-based think-tank Climate Chance, of which this reporter was also an author. They can also provide environmental benefits, such as increasing local resilience against natural disasters. Using planted forests for economic purposes might also help save intact primary (old-growth) forests from deforestation and unsustainable logging.

With the world facing increasing global shortages of fresh water, forests, fish and arable land Russia’s resources could provide a whole range of important ecosystem services, says Makarov, from biotechnologies and sustainable fish farming to responsible tourism to regenerative agriculture. Mining minerals needed for the development of renewable energy could also become a new source of wealth for Russia, he adds.

To make all this possible, though, more changes are needed, says Nelya Rakhimova, coordinator of Coalition for Sustainable Development of Russia who led a civil society review of the implementation of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals in Russia in 2020. “If Russia decides to follow the clean energy and economic transition, it will not be possible without the implementation of all aspects of sustainable development – economic, environmental and social.” To make the most of not just Russia’s natural resources, but its people, “we need fundamental freedoms, the rule of law and open courts”, says Rakhimova.

Rakhimova considers this a “main barrier” to the development of Russia. “If we had an open dialogue with the state, if the basic rules for the adoption of laws and their implementation were in place, then the process of the energy transition itself and the formation of future Russia would be at a completely different stage,” she says.

If one thing is certain, it is that if Russia is to adapt to the global trends in clean energy, new industries are going to have to take centre stage in its economy. With their experience of economic transformation based on natural resources, Russia’s oil regions may soon find themselves with another role to play.

“Here in Khanty-Mansiysk, we need to develop a new economy, based on knowledge and science,” says Tatiana Minayeva, a researcher at the Center of Wetlands Conservation and Restoration, at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Forest Science. “We already have a foundation for that, laid during the oil boom era.”

Data research and visualisation by Kajsa Rosenblad