CO2 Emission Reduction Low Priority on Russian Political Agenda

Press Release

Wednesday, 16 April 2008

CO2 emission reduction low priority on political agenda:

Russian government shows little interest in renewable energy sources

While Russian pro renewable energy specialists and entrepreneurs met last week in St. Petersburg to analyze the options of development of biofuels in Russia, Russian Government announced the building of a new gas pipeline which can cover 30% of Russian energy needs once finished. If Russia would follow up the European goal of a 20% energy supply out of renewable energy sources on top of that, that would count for 50% of all Russian supplies. Summing up the large existing supplies out of oil, gas, coal and nuclear energy it’s very clear that Russia is not directing its attention towards a serious development of renewable energy sources in Russia at the time, thus disconnecting itself from discussions on CO2 emission reduction.

“In this auditorium we are probably together all those who are in favour of the development of renewable energy sources in Russia, but as you can see, we are only about a hundred”. Those where the closing words of Day chair leader Dr. Valentin Ivanov, Chairman of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and of the Department of substitution of nuclear energy and hydrocarbon fuels by other energy sources, stating his frustration on the lack of involvement of Russian political leaders in what has become one of the hottest topics in world debate at this moment: Renewable Energy.

Ivanov: “The financial block inside our Government is only interested in short term development which can bring quick money, like coal gasification or getting liquids out of coal, for example. So we can not expect any incentives for the development of other renewable energy sources”, But Ivanov thinks that Russia, as all countries, needs a state concept in the context of its peculiar situation of regional economies: “Best would be if each region in Russia would be enabled to develop its own energy balance as some parts of our big country would find great benefit from renewables while others simply not qualify at all as they would not have the land, climate or other means. The Russian State should develop the indicators and let us discover where developments would make sense and where not. At this time, 90% of all our regions do nothing at all

with renewable energy and just wait. We waited 8 years on some first legislation and now that we have it, it’s much too weak to work with it and it’s based upon data which are not very trustworthy. So we first need to do our homework on getting solid and real information as this will give the basis to develop an incentive system. I really hope that our State will reflect again on renewable energy and will start to develop a serious concept which should consider above all a concentration of management efforts from State side. There are far to many departments and institutions who do not work at all or do not work together. For example: Biofuels development is connected to “Agro” but it should be also connected to “Regional Development”.

Next stop: Spain

The Biofuels Summit Russia was organised by Survey Madrid-Blanes (Spain) (www.survey.info) in collaboration with the Russian event and exhibition organizer Restec and counted 30 guest speakers from all over the world. St Petersburg will also host the next Russian Summit on renewable energy and will take place in April 2009, again in St. Petersburg.

The next International Biofuels Summit will take place in Madrid, Spain, from 22 to 24 of April next and will handle with the more than critical situation in Europe where Biofuels production and commercialisation are under heavy pressure from both business sides as well as from unclear political behaviour.

In autumn international Biofuels Summit will take place in Buenos Aires, 22- to 24 of October (www.biofuelsummit.info) in the wider context of R.energy, International Trade Show for renewable Energy (www.r-energy.info)

For more information on this press release call +34 902 364 149