To Take the “Green Platform”

The first meeting of the “Platform of BRICS Green Technologies” took place in St. Petersburg in the early April. Financing was one of the key topics of the meeting; however, Russia is not yet ready to receive investments for implementation of green technologies.

The Green Technologies Platform was established a year ago by a resolution of the Ministers of the Environment of the BRICS countries. It was designed as a permanent mechanism for cooperation of representatives of the state authorities, business, international and national financial structures, academic and public organizations of the BRICS countries and international organizations which see the development of the law in the sphere of the “green economy” and “green growth” as the best practice for implementation of “green technologies” at the national levels and within international formats, the official documents say.

The “green financing” was one of the key themes for the St. Petersburg discussions of the union. Participants discussed the possibilities of the extremist exchanges, practices for fundraising campaigns for environmental projects within the frames of the BRICS Bank, and UNEP contribution to financing of “green projects.”

“Coordination of the ‘Strategy of Economic Cooperation of the BRICS Countries” Project is in the finalization and approval stage; its basic principles include the support of the sustainable development, inclusive growth, and the development of the “green economy.” This could be achieved only through following the principle of the three components: social and economic development, and environmental protection,’ the BRICS materials say.

The fact that Russia has joined the green platform is, no doubt, a positive trend. However, this is not yet about the real involvement in the process and getting investments for it. “While Russia had been dealing with the 20th century energy participating in negotiations of the oil prices in Doha, the BRICS bank had allocated money for the 21st century energy, Deutshe Welle wrote. “The new development bank, NDV, a so-called “BRICS Bank” turned its back on Russia, which had so much counted on its investments, in its momentous allocation of the first loans.”

The bank has allotted its first credits in the amount of $811million in the following way: Brazil with receive $300 million, India will receive $250 million, the South Africa will receive $180 million. And China will receive $81 million. All these moneys are allotted for the projects in the sphere of renewable energy. Russia, a co-founder of the bank, will get nothing. And this is only for the reason that Russia has no more or less distinguished project worth financing in this sphere.

Vice President and Financial Director of NDB from the South Africa Leslie Maasdorp had told yet before the allocation of funds in his interview to TASS that BRICS intends to focus on the transfer to the “green” economy. “We will be giving preferences to projects of renewable energy sources. We will develop “green” finances, “green” projects, and issue “green” bonds.”

“Russians keep underestimating the renewable energy,” the Deutshe Welle author wrote. Based on the mass media publications and internet discussions, many people believe that the “green” energy is a sort of a whim of the West which had lost its feeling of the reality and got mad about preservation of the global climate, enforcing its technologies to the rest of the world. At that, they overlook that the global leadership in the matter of production and installation of renewable generating capacities nowadays belongs not to Germany or the U.S., but to China.”

First loans of the new bank are clear evidence to that. However, RF Minister of Finances Anton Siluanov, who is the Chair of the BRICS Bank CEOs Council, assured the mass media that a project for the development of small energy based on hydro generation already has high engineering design maturity.

Representatives of the Russian Social and Ecological Union have not once stressed in their “Development of the Renewable Energy in Russian Regions: Obstacles and Points of Growth” and other position papers the perspectives of RESs progress and the necessity of support to energetic alternatives. Russia should stop losing its potential fritting away its resources on subsiding fossil fuels and start to provide real support to the national science and manufacturing for the development of renewable energy sciences and “green” projects.