Russia!

Russia is a depressing topic for climate people. I had hoped that Indra Overland and Heidi Kjaernet's Russian Renewable Energy: The Potential for International Cooperation (2009) would dispell the gloom a bit, but it largely hasn't, because it largely hasn't convinced me that anything about the picture I posted yesterday is majorly wrong.

For example: Overland and Kjaernet identify the northern settlements as some of Russia's highest-potential niche opportunities for renewable energy, because these areas tend not to be connected to the existing grid and whose power needs must therefore currently be served by expensive and doubtless logistically annoying shipments of diesel fuel. Renewables such as wind, they suggest, would be a natural solution to this problem. Moreover, these settlements isolation from the main grid and its subsidized natural gas prices would reduce competition that would challenge renewables.

However, here are the obstacles that these relatively optimistic authors list for this high-potential niche:

1) Corruption: there's a local black market based around the value of the diesel fuel, which can be skimmed and sold/traded by local power (literally and figuratively) brokers. This corrupt network would likely resist change. "In some locations with largely non-monetized economies this phenomenon is so widespread that diesel functions as the main currency..." (40)
2) Bureaucratic incentives: which, for reasons I'll elide, make it difficult to actually figure out what each community needs and uses in terms of energy, thus complicating effective planning and strongly discouraging private investment.
3) Population trends: population in the far-flung northern regions is declining, a trend which Russia tends to encourage. Why should Russia want to invest in a shiny new energy system for these low-value, declining areas?
4) The geography itself: such remote settlements will also have difficulty bringing in maintenance staff and spare parts for renewable energy installations in a timely manner, making them a less than optimal testing ground for a somewhat experimental renewable energy system.

Whew. And this is for a high-potential niche.

Thus far, I see two additional rays of sunshine from this book.

First, it argues that the renewables resources picture is not as bad as it looks in some ways. For instance, although Russia is largely northerly, it has a climate which in large swathes of the country leads to high proportions of clear days. Solar panels don't need heat, they just need solar radiation (in fact, they function less well at high temperatures). So that's interesting. It doesn't change the fact that the Russian economy's huge reliance on fossil fuels is a huge obstacle; but perhaps at least there aren't two huge obstacles. (Caveat: this book takes a relatively optimistic tone - so take with a grain of salt, here. In particular, it doesn't engage with the issue of winter and daylight hours.)

Second, Russian businesses have begun investing in polycrystalline silicon production facilities. Polycrystalline silicon is the stuff used to make solar panels - as well as a lot of computer components. As uses of this material increase, manufacturers are facing shortages. It'll be an increasingly important base material as time goes on. If Russian business really gets into this material it could be come an important industry. (The caveat here is that their global share is still quite small, so who knows? Plenty of other countries are investing too.)

In addition to this, Russia's current new polycrystalline silicon facilities are being built to serve the Chinese and US markets. Of these two, I'm most interested in the former. Russia has a lot of obvious interests in being able to make money in China, and geography gives them one natural advantage. Some of those products are ones that could be pulled by an emissions reduction drive on the part of the Chinese - natural gas, polycrystalline silicon, nuclear technology? So, if China really commits to emissions reduction (which, arguably, it has already begun to do), could it pull Russia with it? Or more accurately, how much could it pull Russia with it?

There you go: the most optimistic things I have to say about Russia.