Source: New York Times Energy for Tomorrow Conference

At the New York Times Energy for Tomorrow Conferece, Carnegie's Kevin Tu and Adnan Vatansever discussed how China and Russia can balance the competing policy challenges of economic development, energy security, and environmental integrity.

Tu explained that coal will remain China’s leading source of energy for at least the next five years. Making China’s coal value chain—from coal mining to transport to end-use—more efficient, safe, and environmentally benign has the potential to significantly reduce China’s emissions. To successfully tackle the challenges of economic development, energy security, and environmental integrity, Chinese decision-makers should abandon their developing country mentality, and instead focus more on collaboration with other major economies, mainly the United States, Russia, and Europe, he concluded.

Vatansever stated that Russia, which is tied with Saudi Arabia as the world’s biggest oil producer and tied with the United States as the world’s largest gas producer, has the potential to save more oil than the United Kingdom consumes in a year by raising its energy efficiency level to the OECD average. Furthermore, Russia's role as a global energy supplier in the future will be determined by its ability to develop the next generation of oil and gas fields. The structure of the current tax system, the government’s dependence on oil and gas revenue, and the uncertainty regarding foreign investment in the oil and gas sector pose three major challenges for this development, he concluded.

While Beijing is taking climate change very seriously and has introduced a 17 percent carbon intensity reduction goal in its 12th Five Year Plan as well as a national climate change adaptation strategy, Moscow's view on climate change is still one of skepticism, the scholars explained. Tied with India as the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, Russia’s biggest climate change mitigation potential lies in energy efficiency gains.