MOSCOW, May 28 (RIA Novosti) - Russia has lost out on billions of dollars in investment and carbon trading payments due to government delays in considering environmental project applications, the head of an environmental investment group said.
Under the rules of the Kyoto Protocol, Russia is able to sell unused carbon emission allowances to other countries.
"Thirty-eight projects that were considered by Economics Ministry commissions but were not approved would have allowed us to cut emissions by 100 million metric tons per year, which would have provided with one billion euros per year," Mikhail Yulkin, director of the Ecological Investment Center in Arkhangelsk, told a roundtable meeting hosted by RIA Novosti.
The money would have added up to 5 billion euros ($7 billion) since Russia joined the Kyoto Protocol, he said.
A ministry expert, Alisher Aminov, said that the delayed applications include projects by Russia's state-controlled oil producer Rosneft, Russia's largest independent oil producer LUKoil and natural gas giant Gazprom.
"There has not been a single decision on the applications, and there has not been a single session of the commission," he said.
The Kyoto Protocol obliges the 35 industrial states that have ratified the document to cut emissions by 5% below 1990 levels by 2008-2012. Russia's obligations under the pact are far easier to meet than those of Western states, due to the drop in emissions that followed the collapse of industries at the end of the Soviet era.
