The National ESG Alliance took part in COP28 and hosted a session “Business Contribution to Climate Projects” on December 2, 2024. During the session Russian and international experts discussed the topic of corporate contributions to climate projects and shared the experience of currently available solutions.
Vladimir Lukin from Kept presented a large-scale infrastructure project, which is being prepared on the initiative and with the active participation of the founding member of the Alliance. This is a map of climate projects and climate profiles of Russian companies. The interactive map of climate initiatives is based on a geographic information system and displays existing climate projects of Russian companies at any stage of implementation, giving the user an opportunity to examine all available information on them, filter them by various parameters (currently up to 11) and compare them with each other.
As envisioned by the project’s authors, the Alliance working group on climate, the map is designed to stimulate growth in the number and quality of climate projects, encouraging companies to disclose and promote information about such projects, serving as a kind of “display” of best practices and providing the market with the most complete picture of the range of existing business initiatives aimed at achievement of the climate goals.
Oksana Gogunskaya from JSC Kontur, the operator of The Carbon Units Registry of the Russian Federation, gave an overview of the Russian carbon units market functioning, informed on the current achievements and barriers to its development.
Vladimir Zotov from the Association of Waste Utilizers “Klever” touched upon the topic of decarbonization in the context of industrial waste recycling. In his opinion, recycling is an optimal and ready-made way to reduce emissions that does not require major investments in innovation and technological processes. The Association is currently preparing to launch its IT platform, which should become an aggregator of carbon units produced by companies-utilizers.
Archit Srivastava from leading climate project verification company Earthhood noted the importance of the initiatives and methodologies presented as useful tools to improve the quality and transparency of climate project information.
Vladislav Berezovsky from Carbon Zero, a company that acts as a broker in the carbon market, also shared his experience and solutions available to businesses to reduce their carbon footprint, such as green electricity certificates, Aa an example, the largest certificates acquisition deal in Russia took place in April 2023 between the two founding members of the Alliance: En+ and Delo Group.
Amit Tusu from Global Carbon Council spoke about international experience in helping companies implement climate projects, programs, methodologies and shared some implemented cases from the Council’s portfolio
In conclusion, the moderator of the discussion, Andrei Sharonov, invited all participants to highlight what incentives, in their opinion, could attract more companies to implement climate projects. Experts noted the following factors: establishing a favorable price for carbon units, increasing demand, recognizing the contribution of Russian companies at the international level. The last, but perhaps one of the key arguments is the companies’ own desire and will to contribute to tackling climate change.
