Prospects of Carbon Regulation in Russia and Raising Enterprise Responsibility and Involvement in Work Aimed at Cutting Green-House Gas Emissions

Abstract

One of the key challenges of the current century is the growth in green-house gases emissions to the atmosphere. The concentration of carbonic acid gas in the Earth atmosphere keeps rising, which results in climate change. Climate change in Russia can be characterized as continuous warming and its speed is in 2.5 times higher than the speed of global warming. It can prove the volume of our country contribution to the total green-house gas emissions, which shall be taken into account for developing steps aimed at resolving national climatic problems. Ecology in current circumstances and in long-term perspective means practical and scientific and technical foundation for the beginning of man’ rational life on the Earth, when negative impact on the environment is reduced and at the same time accumulated damage is eliminated. Disregard for climatic agenda can create risks for sustainable development of national economy. This principle was introduced in the concept of sustainable development, which is based on balance between human activity and laws of nature by replacing consumers’ attitude towards nature. The article studies the widely-spread economic (market) mechanisms of carbon regulation. General and specific measures of motivating low-carbon development were discussed aiming at higher responsibility and involvement of enterprises in work on cutting green-house gas emissions. The authors show that the key economically effective tools for cutting the carbon footprint are the system of trading quotas on green-house gas emissions, the development of the national system of stock-taking, accounting and emission monitoring. It can be realized as a result of substantiating national emission factors, logical and normative approaches and tested methods for estimation of green-house gas emissions, improvement of the quality of data being analyzed and scenario modeling.