Modeling Russia for Climate Change Issues

This paper presents the dynamic multi-sector general equilibrium model for the Russian Federation (RusMod) and carbon emission projections for Russia up to 2020. Projection results emphasise the importance of accomplishing strong energy efficiency gains, and their effect on the economy and on emissions of greenhouse gases. However, they also show that emissions can be expected to grow at a much higher rate if the efficiency improvements targeted by the government are not realised or when they stay behind compared to the 40% goal as it was set by president Medvedev. Model simulations also show that the introduction of a carbon price as a policy instrument can have a strong impact on the emissions, which comes at the expense of a decline in economic growth that is of a much more temporary nature.