Carbon footprint of Russia: realities and prospects of economic development

Abstract

The article deals with the key aspects of the problem of determining the “carbon footprint” of industrial production. Rapidly increasing greenhouse gas emission within the past two centuries can cause irreversible changes in the Earth’s climate. Various manufacturing industries including “production and consumption of energy” create more than half of the “Earth’s carbon footprint”. The authors present a brief analytical overview of the “carbon footprint” problem in the context of solving a significant issue of global warming. They suggest references to current research and publications of Italian, Chinese and Spanish scientists. For example, Italian researchers proved that social innovations as well as transition to low-carbon technologies can be of good effect in reducing the “carbon footprint”. Chinese researchers (by analyzing 45-year-long data on the quantity of developed natural resources, energy consumption and population growth, “carbon footprint” and carbon dioxide emissions in the USA) proved that in the long-term perspective consumption of natural resources and renewable energy sources can improve the quality of the environment while population growth and consumption of non-renewable energy sources can contribute to its deterioration. Spanish researchers explored the connection between the “carbon footprint” and national peculiarities of people’s life. They listed the basic features of current energy transformation of the global economy (towards increasing the volume of renewable energy sources). The authors considered basic methods of regulating the “carbon footprint” of industrial production: by means of legal prohibition or improvement of pricing mechanism. They introduce the “Strategy of long-term development of Russia with low level of greenhouse gases till 2050”. The article contains information on reporting of greenhouse gas emissions in Russia.