Russia and the great natural gas balancing act
Russia controls the world's largest gas reserves, but a combination of factors, including power production, climate change and logistics, are keeping it from reaping the greatest benefits.Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was in Ankara on Thursday to persuade his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to sign up to the agreement. The main reason behind South Stream is Russia's desire to bypass Ukraine - which is the transit route for almost 80 percent of Russian gas to Europe - at all costs. The only way to do that is to route the pipeline through Turkish territorial waters. The other pipeline, Nord Stream, is currently being laid between Russia and Germany across the Baltic Sea, entering Swedish, Finnish and Danish territorial waters. Germany is Russia's biggest gas customer in the EU and its second-biggest overall, after Ukraine, which has had a notoriously rocky relationship with Moscow since becoming independent following the fall of the Soviet Union.
Any economist would tell you that the smart thing for Russia to do would be to switch all the gas-fired power plants to coal, and then send all that unused gas to Europe at regular market prices. However, coal-fired power plants emit enormous amounts of carbon dioxide into the environment, and as a signatory to the Kytoto Protocol, Russia is obligated to reduce its carbon output. So Russia has started to go another way and has begun to lean a little on renewable energy like hydropower. According to Alexi Kokorin, climate expert at the Russian branch or the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), this is not a move to be more climate friendly, but only to look more climate friendly.
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