The Fuel and Energy Industry of China and Russia in the Context of the Transition to the Low-Carbon Development Trajectory

Abstract

The article analyzes the issues of energy cooperation between Russia and China in connection with the ‘green transition’ in China, China reaching the peak level of emissions in 2030 and its transition to carbon neutrality by 2060. In the foreseeable future, the key area of energy cooperation between the two countries will be the gas sector, with natural gas is being considered as a ‘transitional’ fuel on the way from coal to renewable energy sources. The Chinese economy is actively moving to the use of gas in the energy and residential sectors. At the same time, considering the scale of the Chinese economy, coal will be in demand for a long time, since technological and economic reasons make it difficult to abandon this raw material quickly in favor of less carbon-intensive types of energy resources. Against this background, the Russian fuel and energy industry can avail of the contradictory trends in the energy sector of China – the existing desire for development with low-carbohydrate emissions and current significant volumes of coal generation. This creates a stable basis for the development of bilateral energy cooperation for the upcoming decades. Russia and China have different views on low-carbon development, which is dictated by the different role of energy resources in the economy of each country. China seeks self-sufficiency in supply and therefore purposefully follows the path of the ‘green transition’, while Russia proceeds from the relative duration of the era of non-renewable energy resources. For this reason, ‘green’ projects in Russia are still more related to environmental care within the framework of individual projects ‘on the ground’, and not with a systematic movement towards decarbonization of the energy industry