Russia will teach Europe to use "green" coal

Sergey Kondratiev, Deputy Head of the Economic Department of the Institute for Energy and Finance, commented to Vzglyad.ru on the prospects for the coal industry development in Russia and in the world.

“The rejection of coal generation puts the European energy sector in a very vulnerable position. With high demand for gas in Europe, there has always been a switch to coal. But not everyone in Europe agrees with the complete abandon of coal-fired generation, because this will lead to an economic disaster. This is discussed most seriously in Eastern Europe, in particular in Poland and the Czech Republic,” Sergey Kondratiev says.

“Russia's position is to correctly take into account not only greenhouse gas emissions, but also absorption of emissions, for example, by Russian forests,” Kondratiev says. The EU is in no hurry to recognize the absorbing capacity of our forests. “But the transition to completely carbon-free energy is extremely expensive. This can lead to a multiple increase in the cost of energy resources and to a situation like in neighboring Ukraine, where the cost of housing and communal services can be up to 40-50% of citizens' income. This leads to energy poverty, when a person is forced to choose between buying food and paying for heating,” the expert notes.

“If we talk about the economy, now the share of coal in our energy balance is 15% in terms of primary energy sources. The share of coal in electricity generation is 16%. The share of coal in heat production (in boilers and coal-fired power plants) is 21%. Reducing the share of coal to 4-5% is an ambitious and challenging task. It implies the use of coal only in small settlements in Siberia and the Far East, where it is very difficult to offer alternative energy,” Kondratiev said.

“Even coal-fired generation can be more efficient in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. This is a carbon storage technology that allows carbon capture not only in coal-fired power plants, but also in gas-fired power plants. CO2 can be injected to maintain reservoir pressure in oil fields or simply be buried. This allows the power plant to reduce specific emissions and greenhouse gas emissions by 80-90% of the current level. In fact, we can convert power plants to the category of low-carbon ones. This is still an experimental technology, but Rosneft and Gazpromneft are talking about interest in it,” Sergey Kondratiev says.