Yesterday, on May 28, the Library on Gazetny held a public lecture “Climate cashback: How to develop trade of carbon units?” Experts, business representatives and academic communities, and everyone concerned about the climate agenda gathered to discuss the current state and growth potential of one of Russia's youngest markets. Despite almost 37 mn carbon units (CU) that are already in circulation and another 107 mn planned to be released, market participants notice the following trend: the number of climate projects is growing, while liquidity and transaction volume remain low.
Moderators and lecturers, Antonina Levashenko, Head of the International Best Practices Analysis Department at the Gaidar Institute, and Maria Girich, Researcher of this Department, emphasized the main question of the meeting: how to transform carbon units from a status asset into a fully-fledged liquid instrument. The identified key barriers included uncertainty regarding project quality assessment, lack of traditional financial mechanisms, and low business confidence.
Invited experts examined the issue from different angles.
Oksana Gogunskaya, General Director, АО “Kontur”, in the course of the lecture answered questions about how to increase investor interest in the carbon credit market, how promising foreign markets are, and what climate project executives need to do to make their carbon units more attractive to buyers.
Liudmila Kabir, Senior Researcher of the Center of International Finance at the Russian Ministry of Finance, tackled the topic of accounting for carbon units in the absence of a specific federal standard. The discussion focused on how to account for carbon units: either as an intangible asset that can be written off upon maturity, or as reserves if the investor has implemented a climate project, as well as how to account for free government-issued quotas.
Irina Kalacheva, author and moderator of “Green Lady ESG” channel, replied to a question, i.e. about which countries or individual regions it is realistic to establish trade in Russian carbon units in the near future and what needs to be done to achieve this.
Elena Miakotnikova, Chair of The Chamber of Commerce and Industry's Council for sustainable business development, corporate social responsibility and volunteering, drawing on her working experience with companies implementing climate projects, answered questions about which projects are promising for companies in Russia and what should be considered to better sell carbon units.
Marina Lebedeva and Denis Lisiansky, representing International Banking Institute named after Anatoly Sobchak, replied to a question about the role of banks in stimulating the carbon units’ market. A Russian case was cited during the discussion: Gazprombank purchased 2000 carbon units from SIBUR to offset part of its direct emissions under Scope 1.
We should like to express our thanks to speakers and listeners for their lively interest in the topic and comprehensive discussion!
The event was held with information support provided by journals "Oil Refining and Petrochemistry" and FUELS Digest.