Renewable Energy Sources: Contribution to Decarbonization of Russian Energy

Abstract

The role of solar and wind energy in the current processes of decarbonization of the Russian electric power industry is considered. The issues of the formation and further development of renewable energy, which can make up a significant share of the country’s energy balance thanks to the legislation introduced to stimulate its implementation, are discussed. The rates of commissioning of renewable energy-generation facilities (hereinafter referred to as renewable generation) by region are analyzed, and trends towards reducing capital expenditures in the construction of both solar and wind grid power plants are assessed. An important feature of renewable generation is its stochastic nature, which can cause certain problems when transmitting energy to electrical networks and requires the adoption of special measures to increase the share of renewable energy sources in electrical networks and additional costs to ensure it. Abroad, where a significantly greater path has been taken in the development of the industry, the introduction of grid energy-storage devices, methods for converting surplus energy generated by renewable sources into various useful products and other measures are widely discussed as such measures. In Russia, the overall share of RES in the energy balance is still quite small, but it has already reached threshold values in some regions, at which several pilot projects are being implemented using electric energy-storage devices in both network and autonomous systems. The article provides estimates of the contribution of grid solar and wind power plants to replacing energy from traditional sources and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and examines the problems and prospects for further development of the industry, primarily from the point of view of the need to reconstruct the grid infrastructure.