We need to understand that the European Union allocates 20% of its budget to the green transition. We also need to understand that almost all financial institutions have declared a policy of carbon neutrality. If the campaigns in which they participate don’t pursue a policy of carbon neutrality, then they will leave [the game] and won’t finance any projects at all — Ruslan Edelgeriyev, Advisor to the President of the Russian Federation; Special Presidential Representative on Climate Issues.

It appears to me that 100% of industries in Russia and 100% of businesses in Russia have already found themselves in a situation that can be described as either transformation with deep restructuring, or lagging behind. It’s just that 1% of industries and 1% of businesses have understood this so far […] We are lagging very far behind. Everything we boast about was made 10 years ago [...] We are entering transformations on a scale that Russia has not encountered over the past 100 years of its history. This is what we are talking about, and we also need to respond to this appropriately — Anatoliy Chubais, Special Representative of the President of the Russian Federation for Relations with International Organisations to Achieve Sustainable Development Goals.

Tectonic shifts are expected in the economy, in the organization of business, and in technological development. I would like to point out to everyone that all the problems on the climate agenda – and we are not yet fully aware of this – will have a significant impact on the content of education — Valery Falkov, Minister of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation.

We see that Russian business will suffer most of all. First, it will be export-oriented companies, then it will reach all companies because all production chains are interconnected, and this will affect everyone in one way or another. We are already seeing today that our companies, to some extent, are using the services of the EU ETS – the European Union Emissions Trading System [...] On the one hand, it’s good that we are integrating into the market, but, on the other hand, it is very bad because we see that this is how resources will be withdrawn and will financially flow to other jurisdictions. We need to create our own projects, markets, and, of course, a carbon-correcting mechanism — Ruslan Edelgeriyev, Advisor to the President of the Russian Federation; Special Presidential Representative on Climate Issues.

Over the past 20 years, the European Union has reduced emissions by 30% and has now set the goal of reducing them by 55%. We’re going in the opposite direction [...] And if we fail to properly evaluate the starting picture and say that everything is fine with us, then the wrong conclusions [will be made] […] We aren’t just lagging behind, we are lagging behind to the point where we are at a fork in the road between the reversible lag and the irreversible lag. This is where we are now, if we are calling a spade a spade. Yes, we have a wonderful energy balance. Everything is fine — Anatoliy Chubais, Special Representative of the President of the Russian Federation for Relations with International Organisations to Achieve Sustainable Development Goals.

The first serious, large-scale problem facing our country is the creation of a non-discriminatory system to assess the balance of greenhouse gases. The project that we launched [a pilot project to create testing sites in several Russian regions to calculate the carbon balance, where research will be carried out to create technologies to monitor and analyse the ability of territories to capture and store carbon from the atmosphere] is actually very small-scale – it’s only seven regions with carbon testing sites so far […] We have joined efforts with a huge number of universities and institutes. Their efforts were disorganized: some of them were working with image processing, some with agricultural technologies, and some were researching forests. All this needs to be united to create an independent assessment, a carbon control system [...] It turned out that we don’t have ready-made solutions, but we cannot borrow them, and such a system must be scientifically grounded. Since science is international, it must not only be recognized within the country. It should above all be understandable for our partners, for those who are already to conduct relevant research in other countries. And ideally, of course, the system used to independently assess the carbon balance should be adopted by our colleagues in associations at the very least, perhaps within the BRICS — Valery Falkov, Minister of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation.

Legislation must respond to challenges. Today we are running behind. It’s not consistent with these trends, and most importantly, if financial flows are ignored, we are hopelessly behind technologically, which is unacceptable — Ruslan Edelgeriyev, Advisor to the President of the Russian Federation; Special Presidential Representative on Climate Issues.

The state should create all the mechanisms so that we can use the results of projects and our competitive advantage from projects in the global world market [...] We are obviously going to face challenges, and we will have to adjust the current regulations or the ones that we are planning to adjust to these challenges — Igor Nechaev, Chairman of the Board of Directors, MCC EuroChem.

We have great prospects for low-carbon development. That’s what our ecosystem is – the forests of the Russian Federation make up 20% [of all forests in the world]. We can be the beneficiaries of the entire green agenda. The main thing for us as a country is to be ready for this and to create all the infrastructure, which is what the state is doing right now. The task for the next year is to come up with a national regulation on limiting greenhouse gas emissions. We are doing this, and pilot projects and the basic bill are already on the way. [Another task] is to complete work on creating sectoral region-based plans for adaptation. We believe this will make it possible to prepare our country for the global energy transition, for a new technological order and, as a result, to preserve Russia’s leading position as an energy superpower — Ilya Torosov, Deputy Minister of Economic Development of the Russian Federation.

We still need an approach to taxation, but not to burden companies. Rather, we still need to find this balance. For example, if we introduce taxation on CO2, on carbon, then we need to reduce the tax on the extraction of minerals so that the overall tax burden does not increase on business. The whole world does this in principle — Ruslan Edelgeriyev, Advisor to the President of the Russian Federation; Special Presidential Representative on Climate Issues.

We need a focus, we need a carbon tax, but then we really need to balance other taxes. A mining tax is a great idea. Burdening business all the time is definitely a one-way path. Of course, we must find a balance. Of course, we must accurately use the experience of the European Union [...] We believe the Russian government should create clear conditions, a transparent mechanism of taxation, assistance in the earmarking of funds, and a balance in other elements of taxation so that business, science, and the state can jointly solve this problem — Alexander Shevelyov, Chief Executive Officer, Severstal Management .

We have already prepared a carbon regulation and a law limiting greenhouse gases […] I hope that in the near future we will already adopt our basic law on carbon regulation, which has basically formed the architecture and conceptual framework and created an opportunity for the emergence of the voluntary climate projects that businesses wanted — Ilya Torosov, Deputy Minister of Economic Development of the Russian Federation.