Irina Gaida, Deputy Director of Skoltech Energy Transformation and ESG Project Center, said that the countries participating in the COP (Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) conference should forget the contradictions and continue to look for ways to solve climate problems. At a roundtable organized by Rosatom on the importance of the climate agenda in Russia.
“As long as climate negotiations continue, anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions will continue to increase. “However, despite a much lower rate of change than climate scientists would like to see, it is very important that the dialogue at the COP continues, despite all the contradictions that exist between countries,” he said.
As Professor Boris Revich, head of the laboratory for environmental quality and public health forecasting at the National Institute of Economic Forecasting of the Russian Academy of Sciences, points out, there are many uncertainties on the climate agenda.
According to him, climate change does not mean warming, but “climate oscillation”; more severe frosts, more intense temperatures, a more unstable climate, more precipitation and the number of extremely hot days.
“Climate change is happening much faster than our geophysicist colleagues and other experts predicted. By now, and I think within the next 20-30 years, we are unlikely to learn how to build models that take into account the impact of the world’s oceans. “On the other hand, political events in the world, problems of scarcity of energy resources, and problems of returning to coal production put the climate system under pressure,” he said.
According to Polina Lyon, director of the sustainable development department of the state corporation Rosatom, the demand for Russian nuclear technologies to solve climate problems continues to grow.
“Unlike previous UN climate conferences, at COP28 our business agenda and demand for negotiation meetings took precedence over the agenda of developing our nuclear energy products. “The business world is starting to understand how to use this platform,” he added.
At the same time, according to Lyon, the minimum level of emissions from nuclear energy has been confirmed not only by Rosatom’s calculations, but also by independent international experts. “Atomic, together with wind and solar generation, is an unconditional component of the global energy transition,” he emphasized.
Within the framework of the Climate Change Conference held in Dubai this year, Rosatom will present its solutions in the field of small nuclear power plants. Let us recall that Russia has built the world’s first floating nuclear power plant, which has been providing electricity to Pevek, Chukotka, since the end of 2019. Currently, Russia is building modernized floating power units for the development of mineral deposits in Chukotka and the world’s first modern low-power land-based nuclear power plant in Yakutia.
The UN Climate Change Conference is the largest forum focusing on issues on the climate agenda, as well as the highest negotiating body for the implementation of the provisions of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol (KP). and Paris Agreement (PA (prohibited organization in Russia)).