The photo is sourced from marathon.znanierussia.ru
Rae Kwon Chung contrasted the free market seeking short-term profits to a sustainable development model that can ensure achievement of the economic growth without doing any harm to the planet. “This idea goes back to the early 1990s when the UN Conference on Environment and Development was held in Rio de Janeiro,” the scientist said. “The final declaration affirmed that in order to achieve sustainable development, environmental protection must be an integral part of the development process and cannot be considered in isolation from it,” he added.
Speaking about a distinctive feature of transition to a sustainable development, R.K. Chung called the use of a new emission calculation method, which would take into account CO2 emissions across the entire value chain: from production of raw materials to their final disposal by the consumer. This concept partially took shape in division of emissions into three categories, which can be illustrated by an oil refinery: the first (Scope 1 emissions) includes the emissions in relation to the primary oil processing and production of such petroleum products as gasoline and diesel fuel ; the second (Scope 2) – the carbon dioxide forming in the atmosphere during generation of the electricity consumed by the refinery; the final third category (Scope 3) is emissions specific to raw material suppliers (oil companies) and the end product users (car users burning fuel resulting in CO2 emissions).
According to R.K. Chung, the statistics of the end-user countries must take into account the three types of emissions; this will reduce the carbon footprint not only in certain regions of the planet (for example, in Europe, where the industry share in GDP has been declining in the recent decades) but throughout the world, as a whole. This decision will also push development of low-carbon industries, which is already obvious today being illustrated by formation of a new power industry – the energy storage systems, electric vehicles, fuel cell technology, etc. According to the scientist, Russia has a competitive advantage in development of these industries: in particular, due to its territorial extension, which allows creation of the underground reservoirs for CO2 storing.
