PRESS: Rosneft CEO suggests making EU see Russia’s CO2 quotas

MOSCOW, Aug 23 (PRIME) -- Russian oil major Rosneft’s CEO Igor Sechin has asked President Vladimir Putin to make the E.U. acknowledge the country’s internal quotas on CO2 emissions to alleviate the negative impact of the E.U. carbon tax, Kommersant business daily reported on Monday quoting Sechin’s letter to Putin.

“To work out issues of acknowledgement of carbon units that circulate in Russia in the territory of other countries,” Sechin said in the letter as quoted by Kommersant.

Sechin wrote about Russia’s introduction of the voluntary system of calculation of CO2 emissions so that Russian exporters that face the E.U. cross-border carbon tax, which Europe is expected to launch in 2026, could use the system to take their emissions into account while paying the tax.

Sechin also wants Russia to be included into the list of countries, the goods of which are free from the cross-border carbon tax as their ecosystems are capable of absorbing greenhouse gases. In order to do that, Russia needs international recognition of the absorption capacity of its forests, as well as methodological and regulatory support of projects for CO2 absorption, he said.

At the same time, the regulatory base should be voluntary and include tax stimuli like exemption from payments, accelerated amortization, and exemptions from property tax for companies that will cut their emissions on their own, he said.

The business daily also said that Putin had ordered Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, Economic Development Minister Maxim Reshetnikov, and Industry and Trade Minister Denis Manturov to work out the suggestions and report on them.

Rosneft and the office of Novak did not provide a comment, while the Industry and Trade Ministry refused to comment. A representative of the Economic Development Ministry said that the authority was finishing its work on a system of green financing that the government will support in the first three years of its operation. The business would be able to raise cheap money from abroad on upgrades and on technologies for reduction of the carbon footprint, the representative said.

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