Growing up in the UK, my one certainty about Russia was that it was cold. Any winter freeze was liable to be blamed on an ill Siberian wind, and no TV footage of the place was seemingly complete without someone sporting an ushanka. This cold transcended the merely physical. Relations with Moscow were invariably either thawing or freezing, a result of our interminable and low-temperature war.
Yet Russia’s economy, and Putin’s own power, are tied overwhelmingly to the prodigious production and export of fossil fuels. So, from Moscow’s perspective, the energy transition could result in a stranded asset spanning 11 time zones. As Gustafson writes: “Russia is already one of the chief causes of climate change; but as time goes on, it will also be one of its chief victims.”
The obvious strategy for Russia, as with other petrostates, is to diversify its economy. Yet oil and gas alone account for more than half of Russian exports. Moreover, subsidised domestic gas is woven into the social contract, encouraging demand: Russia uses more gas than the entire EU and, per dollar of GDP, five times as much as the US. Overall, in energy terms, the Russian economy remains a furnace, and thereby more carbon-intensive, relative to Western economies and, lately, even China.
Meanwhile, Putin has long gazed northward at potential opportunities arising from retreating Arctic sea-ice, opening up shipping lanes . The so-called northern sea route is potentially lucrative, shaving weeks off sailing times from Europe to Asia and providing easier access to global markets for new energy and mining projects in Russia’s far north.
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