Greenhouse gas emissions in the G20 countries continue to grow. Russia has not yet embarked on the path to 1.5° C,” notes the recently published Brown-Green Report 2019, the world’s most comprehensive annual review of climate action by countries. Russia must have a low-carbon development strategy, and such a strategy is being prepared. Whether the elimination of monopoly in the energy sector and the long-term goals of achieving 100% renewable energy will be comprised in this strategy, still is an open question.
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Analysts at the World Economic Forum (WEF), together with Mckinsey&Company, prepared the Energy Transition Index (ETI) 2020, a ranking of states’ power production readiness for the transition to renewable energy. Russia, ranked the 70th last year, now dropped down to the 80th line, although the document attributed it as a “potentially promising” country. 
On World Environmental Day (June 5), the Russian Social-Ecological Union (RSEU) reporting of ongoing attacks on environmental defenders. Over the 5 months of 2020, 63 new episodes were recorded in relation to more than 170 eco-activists, groups and NGOs in 20 regions of Russia at 32 environmental struggles. RSEU has been monitoring persecution of environmentalists since 2012 and demands solving environmental problems and protecting eco-activists.
The latest waste management reform in Russia, scheduled for March 2020, has been postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Representatives of public organizations believe: to reduce waste, systemic changes in the principles of production and consumption are required.
The pandemic has put the global economy in a stupor; most countries in the world, according to analysts, are on the way towards a grave crisis. Only a few sectors will be able to avoid reforming, restructuring or liquidation. Where to look for a way out of the crisis? RSEU Climate Secretariat supports the viewpoint of the Club of Rome that the “green agenda” could be salvation: that is, taking fossil fuels off and supporting a circular economy.
At the current pace of state program implementation, the energy intensity of the gross domestic product will decrease by no more than 21% by 2035, the Ministry of Economic Development presented the State Report on the state of energy conservation in the RF. Representatives of the Russian Social and Ecological Union believe that practical actions and financing are crucial for the improvement of energy efficiency.
The State Duma of the Russian Federation in the third reading adopted the Federal Law “On Amendments to the Law ‘On the Electric Power’ concerning the development of micro generation.” Will there appear a million solar roofs in Russia?
One of the conflicting topics of the climate negotiations in Madrid was the “double counting” of carbon reductions. during the negotiations, the Friends of the Earth and 160 other civil society organizations issued a statement in which they emphasized that carbon quotas and everything connected with them are profanations of greenhouse gas reductions, and those should have no place in the new climate agreement.
A decrease in the share of coal in the energy balance is a global trend of recent years. It seems that Russian energy companies also began to recognize the importance of this process: Irkutskenergo got engaged in assessing the prospects for the sale of its coal assets. Members of non-governmental organizations believe that energy strategies at any level should be aimed at evolution to low-carbon production based on the replacement of coal energy with RESs.