Will Climate Change Make Russia a Superpower Again?

Some analysts suggest that Russia may benefit from climate change for a combination of reasons discussed here. ARD Committee feels that this optimism may be overdone: climate change will affect all countries negatively, but this negative impact may not be as bad for Russia as for some other countries. Negative consequences of climate change can only be combatted by coordinated long-term efforts of all countries despite serious disagreements between some governments on various political issues.

Commentary produced by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) may counterbalance the point of view expressed in the above YouTube material.

ARD invites comments on this topic from all ARD members and friends.

World’s Largest Carbon Capture Plant Opened in Iceland

World’s Largest Carbon Capture Plant ‘Orca’ opened in Iceland in 2021. It will use geothermal energy to pull thousands of metric tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and pump it underground.

As reported by Ben Panko, Orca will be able to capture the equivalent of the annual emissions made by 790 cars. The world's largest carbon capture plant has come online in Iceland, as entrepreneurs and environmentalists seek to build momentum for technology they see as key to fighting the increasingly dire threat of climate change.

Named "Orca," the facility is located on a lava plateau in southwest Iceland, reports Michael Birnbaum for the Washington Post. Using a system of fans, filters and heaters and powered by a nearby geothermal power plant, it has the capacity to pull 4,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide out of the air each year and pump it into underground caverns where the gas, mixed with water, will slowly become stone as it cools.

“This is a market that does not yet exist, but a market that urgently needs to be built,” says engineer Christoph Gebald, who co-founded Climeworks, the company behind Orca. “This plant that we have here is really the blueprint to further scale up and really industrialize.”

Climeworks opened the world's first commercial carbon capture facility in Switzerland in 2017. That original plant has the ability to capture roughly 900 tons of carbon dioxide per year, and uses the captured gas in greenhouses and sells it to carbonated beverage producers.

The construction of Orca single-handedly increases Earth's annual carbon capture capacity by 40 percent to 13,000 metric tons, reports Corbin Hiar of E&E News, but that is a small fraction of what will be needed to significantly reverse humanity's carbon emissions. Around 31.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide were emitted in 2020, reports Nikolaj Skydsgaard of Reuters. Orca will be able to capture the equivalent of the annual emissions made by 790 cars.

The Climeworks founders hope to be able to remove 500,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by the end of this decade, reports Ragnhildur Sigurdardottir and Akshat Rathi of Bloomberg Green. They already have plans to build a plant ten times larger than Orca within three years—and other companies aren't far behind, reports Molly Taft of Gizmodo. A plant due in Scotland by 2026 will capture between 500,000 and 1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, while a planned facility in Texas will capture up to 1 million metric tons per year and use it help pump oil.

Orca's method of carbon capture, called "direct air capture," is a relatively new technique, which uses chemical reactions to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, reports Audrey Carleton for Motherboard. The method contrasts with the more commonly used technologies that capture carbon emissions directly at their sources. It's also currently incredibly expensive, with a price tag of roughly $600 to $800 per metric ton of carbon dioxide.

Direct air capture's high costs, relative lack of track record, and energy requirements have made it a controversial proposition among environmentalists, Motherboard reports. This year, hundreds of environmental groups signed an open letter to leaders in the American and Canadian governments arguing that carbon capture is not a solution to climate change because it gives cover to fossil fuel companies, among other reasons.

“National strategies should focus on eliminating the use of fossil fuels and other combustible sources in our energy system, not simply reducing their emissions intensity," the groups wrote. Nonetheless, many scientists remain optimistic, per Gizmodo. "Orca is still small compared to the scale of the challenge, but it’s an important step in the right direction," carbon removal expert David Morrow of American University tells Gizmodo.

Ben Panko is a staff writer for Smithsonian.com

Gas market in Russia will change beyond recognition

On May 28, 2022 Russian analyst, Alexander Pirozhkov, noted that gas market in Russia will change beyond recognition due to reduced exports to Europe

Photo by: TASS

The specific marginality of blue fuel production will drop sharply in the second half of this decade. Along with it, the revenues of the Russian budget will also decrease, which, on the one hand, will receive less revenue from gas producing companies, and on the other hand, will have to subsidize the construction of new gas pipelines to China and projects to liquefy natural gas. This opinion was shared during the conference "Russian Gas Market. Exchange Trading 2022" held in St. Petersburg by Alexei Belogoriev, Deputy Director of the Institute for Energy and Finance (FIEF). According to the fund's estimates, unfriendly countries have accounted for more than 75% of Gazprom's gas exports in recent years. At the same time, in the structure of the monopoly's revenue, sales to non-CIS countries in 2021 amounted to 48.6% (3.1 trillion rubles).

During 2022, Europe intends to significantly reduce the purchase of gas from Gazprom. According to the plan of the European Commission, published on March 8, 2022, the reduction should be 50% (from 155 bcm to 72.5 bcm). The version of the International Energy Agency is less bold - the reduction is possible only by 30%, to 108.5 billion m3.

According to Sergey Kapitonov, a gas analyst at the Energy Center of the Moscow School of Management Skolkovo, Europe's reduction in Russian gas purchases by 40–50 billion m3 this year looks real, while plans for 70–80 billion are political speculation.

However, in mid-May, European officials unveiled a plan under which the EU is going to completely phase out Russian fossil fuels by 2027. Russia will be able to redirect part of the released volume to friendly countries. According to FIEF estimates, by 2025, exports to such countries may increase by a third compared to 2021 and reach 95 billion m3.

The volume of the domestic market, according to the FIEF, last year was 68% of the total demand in the gas balance, but the share of gas sales in Russia in Gazprom's revenue did not exceed 20%. This part of income, by the way, will also be reduced in the next year or two due to the fall of the economy. Published a week ago, the basic version of the forecast of the Ministry of Economic Development assumes a decrease in Russia's GDP in 2022 by 7.8%.

Nevertheless, according to Aleksey Khmelnitsky, General Director of AG ERTA, the domestic gas market for the industry will become more significant every year: by 2027, the share of Gazprom's revenue on it may reach 40%. This will sooner or later lead to pressure on tariffs.

“If export flows dry up, all the costs of maintaining the gas transportation system will have to be invested in the domestic gas tariff,” the expert warned. all over the world they pay for it. We didn’t pay because there was export. What follows from this? They will come to consumers with the words: you better plan consumption, and if you deviate from the plan, pay a fine."