The Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation announced the creation of Russia’s first-ever carbon capture facility, located in Tomsk off the floodplain of the Ob River.

Additional plans include constructing a carbon farm to develop and test carbon absorption, neutralization, and recycling technologies.

“The Tomsk regional carbon test site will become a part of the test site network created under the order of Vladimir Putin. The network will solve both climate and economic issues,” said Lyudmila Borilo, executive director of the TSU Center of Excellence

This project is the first of its kind in Russia. Russia accounts for 4.6% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, behind China, the United States, and India.

The Russian President has also ordered the creation of 80 additional carbon test sites to monitor and study the carbon cycle across different ecosystems. The goal is to assess the natural carbon balance of Russia to implement initiatives that drastically reduce emissions.

According to Borilo, “The numbers are not in our favor. The EU data states that German forests absorb ten times more carbon than the Russian. It is obviously untrue, but we need to prove it. A network monitoring all the country’s major ecosystems will provide the necessary data and prove that Russia, with its natural resources, does an ecosystemic favor to the whole planet. It needs to be counted towards the carbon quota allocation under the Paris treaty.”

It is important to note that there is an economic factor at play here as well. With pending EU taxes concerning carbon, accurate measuring is needed. Russia could expect to pay billions while losing the ability to export products with a high carbon footprint (such as metal, oil, and wheat).

This is one of the reasons the carbon credit industry is booming – companies need to find ways to offset carbon as quickly as possible.

Regardless of the motive, with China, the EU, the US, and many others focused on reducing carbon through additional regulations, innovative technologies, and carbon offsetting, it feels as if the world is on its way to meeting net-zero goals.