Russian President Vladimir Putin is the most influential person in the blockchain industry, according to Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of major cryptocurrency exchange Binance, which added v trading pairs: Binance Coin (BNB), Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and XRP at the get-go of December, as well equally adding Tether (USDT) later the same month against the Russian ruble.

Putin was the outset to suggest a multinational cryptocurrency forth with the Eurasian Economical Matrimony, or EAEU, and BRICS countries subsequently being advised by Vitalik Buterin in the wake of the 2022 cryptocurrency chimera.

Related: Pax Crypto: Russia Proposes First Multinational Cryptocurrency, Expert Blog

With the EAEU's Trade and Economic Cooperation with China coming into effect this yr, Russia, with total support of the EAEU countries and BRICS Business organization Council, is seeking to establish a multinational stablecoin backed by bolt; along with BRICS pay, a cloud platform that volition connect the countries' national payment systems through a mobile payment app. Russian federation, India and China are planning to link national payment messaging systems, Prc's CIPS and Russian federation'south FMSB, to accomplish this. This will be a major stride on the path to dedollarization and a decoupling from the electric current United States-controlled global banking system, and could lay the foundation for BRICS fellow member country integration. The Bank of Russia, the country's central banking company, has already begun testing stablecoins pegged to bolt in a regulatory sandbox.

Related: BRICS Nations Discuss Shared Crypto to Break Away From USD and SWIFT

Digitalization is a priority

Russia is the world'due south largest country. It is a leader in applied science and a primary energy producer and exporter, with eighty% of its economy dependent on exporting natural gas, oil — including high-sulfur fuel oil — metals and timber.

In Soviet times, Russia's centralized electricity plants powered many iron-curtain countries from Romania to Ukraine, and still remains an important player in the global energy system, providing 10% of global main free energy production and 16% of international energy trade. Russian federation ranks fourth in the world in primary electricity production, energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions, equally the land is lxx% electrified past hydrocarbon free energy. Russian federation'south CO2 emissions are almost double the G-xx average.

Recently, Russian scientists discovered a massive fountain of methane gas — emitting up to 9 times the global average — bubbles from the seafloor in the East Siberian Ocean and further polluting the air. Oceans deed every bit the largest carbon sink of our planet and host 80% of all life while providing half of the planet's oxygen. According to the U.South. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Assistants:

"More than ninety% of the warming that has happened on World over the past 50 years has occurred in the sea."

Oceans are warming at the same charge per unit equally if five Hiroshima bombs were being dropped into them every 2d. The Russian Natural Resources and Environment Ministry acknowledged that Russia is heating faster than the remainder of the earth — warming 2.5 times quicker than the planet's average — equally wildfires raged across country-size tracts of Siberian forest, followed by extreme flooding. This has contributed to the rise of bounding main levels from the melting of ice sheets in the Arctic, which is also warming faster than the rest of the earth.

Related: Chinese Blockchain-Based Mobile Payment Revolution: How Is the Biggest CO2 Polluter Becoming Leading Earth Solar Panels Producer

To diversify Russia's hydrocarbon free energy-intensive economy, President Putin signed a prescript in 2022 establishing a special "Digital Economic system" country program, with digital energy infrastructure mentioned equally a key component. It also includes the goal to increase the share of renewable energy sources in its Free energy Strategy, so that iv.5% of the full energy consumption by 2030 comes from renewable energy sources to boost science and technology development, ecology comeback, and energy supply for isolated power systems, which in plough will strengthen the economic system and create new jobs. The Digital Evolution and Energy Ministries have also developed projects focused primarily on digitalization, regulation and coordination of the free energy sector.

The expansion of the global digital economic system created many new economic opportunities, with Russians backside some of the nigh successful digital platforms in the world. For example, Sergey Brin co-founded Google, which now has some 90% of the marketplace for net searches; while Vitalik Buterin co-founded Ethereum, which allows programmers to develop decentralized blockchain applications — and so much then that it'southward losing its scalability, resulting in very high gas fees, every bit boring transaction times crave a substantial electricity supply for processing. In December, the Russian government said it had completed a multi-twenty-four hours examination of a national intranet known as RuNet.

The Russian Clan of Cryptocurrency and Blockchain counts over 2,000 members. Companies involved in cryptocurrency payments include Yandex, WebMoney, Mail.ru, Vkontakte, Odnoklassniki, QIWI/QBT, MirPay and Wex. Companies involved in cryptocurrency mining include BitRiver, Minery and Russian Mining Company, which utilize Siberian hydropower plants to metabolize electricity into money very cheaply at $0.04 per Kw/h, comparable to the solar energy prices in India, at $0.03 to $0.04 per Kw/h.

Related: Blockchain Pilot Makes Waves in Russian federation'south Energy Sector

Digitalization of the energy sector as a whole, and of the power sector in particular, is part of a global trend that both the EAEU and BRICS countries are involved in. According to the IEA, investments in digital technologies globally are higher than in gas-fired ability generation. So far, Rosseti — Russian federation's national energy grid operator — has developed a blockchain solution for payments for the retail electricity sector with tech startup Waves, recently commencing airplane pilot testing in the regions of Kaliningrad and Sverdlovsk.

Related: Green Policy and Crypto Energy Consumption in the EU

Solar digital initiatives for ability plants and waterways

Currently, solar free energy utilization in Russia stands at but effectually 0.iii%, merely the plummeting solar energy costs and breakthroughs in high-efficiency solar cells could aid the transition to renewable energy use.

Last yr, the Moscow-based Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology demonstrated an organic solar jail cell able to withstand 6,000 gray units of gamma radiation — an achievement the institute says is a tape high. Solar company Hevel is producing solar modules with an energy conversion efficiency of 22% and is behind edifice solar and storage into diesel fuel power plants, hydro plants, oil and gas refineries and solar plants in EAEU countries, with green-finance funding from both the European Banking concern for Reconstruction and Development and the Green Climate Fund. Hevel will audit the emissions in these solar-energized facilities with the globe's first blockchain-issued dark-green certificates.

Water pollution — which includes CO2 pollution — is also a major result in Russia, which houses 25% of the world'due south freshwater. Approximately 70% of Russia'southward drinking water comes from surface water, and the remaining volume from groundwater. More than 10 million Russians currently lack admission to quality drinking h2o, with around 35% to threescore% of full reserves of drinking water non meeting sanitary standards, according to Russian regulatory bodies. This exacerbates wellness bug in many cities and villages across the country, with simply eight% of wastewater correctly treated earlier beingness returned to the waterways.

Worsening this situation is Russia'southward plans to filibuster complying with the International Maritime Organization'due south mandate to lower marine sector emissions by over lxxx% by switching to lower-sulfur fuels starting on January. 1, 2022. The lack of compliance implies that Russia will not be auditing its huge inland waterway and deepsea fleets in Russian-controlled waters, which business relationship for 53% of the Chill Ocean coastline, as information technology unveils major plans for Arctic oil and gas drilling and shipping. "Permafrost is undergoing rapid change," cautioned the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The changes threaten the "structural stability and functional capacities" of oil manufacture infrastructure, the authors warned.

To monitor and measure water pollution in the Kuybyshev Reservoir, the largest water reservoir in Eurasia, robotics research center Airalab Rus and the Tolyatti State Academy have developed a solar-and-battery energized drone boat named "Drone on the Volga" that monitors water pollution and distributes its readings through the Ethereum blockchain, including data such as the drone boat'due south exact location at the time the readings were taken. Nevertheless, satellites remain a crucial and efficient instrument in providing valuable ecology data.

Related: Nippon to Solarize Its Burgeoning Digital Economy, Good Take

Solar Power Satellite (SPS) Systems

Space-based science fiction has been office of mainstream Russian literature since 1784, with Vasily Alekseyevich Lyovshin's novel, "The Newest Voyage." The book describes the first Russian flying to the Moon. Centuries later, on Oct. 4, 1957, Soviets ushered in the infinite historic period when the Soviet Space Agency launched the get-go battery-operated satellite, Sputnik 1, into an elliptical depression Earth orbit from the Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan. From and so on, the state served as the locomotive of space-age technological advancements such as the first probe to impact the Moon (1959), the first homo in space (1961), and a number of other space related "firsts."

Russia'southward Znamya SPS project began in the tardily 1980s and consisted of a serial of orbital mirror experiments that were intended to beam solar power to Earth by reflecting sunlight to increase the length of a twenty-four hour period, with the goal of boosting productivity in farms and cities. In 2022, Russia and India launched a scientific-educational satellite called YouthSat to study solar-terrestrial relationships. On July fourteen, 2022, the Russian Space Agency, Roscosmos, successfully launched Mayak satellites that focused the sun'southward solar rays onto World. Mayak — complete with an android tracking app — circled the planet at a height of nigh 600 kilometers (372 miles) in a pole-to-pole, low Globe orbit.

During the Eleventh BRICS Meridian in November 2022, the BRICS space agencies that are leaders in earth space initiatives agreed to build a "virtual constellation of remote sensing satellites" for various applications, including environmental monitoring and natural resource direction.

Related: Is US Ecology Tax Policy Hindering Solar Power to Fuel Digital Technologies?

Tax policy in Russia and Member States

Russia taxes 13% of CO2 emissions from energy use. Co-ordinate to an International monetary fund report, Russia ranks number three in subsidies to the hydrocarbon industry, at $551 billion, and holds the world's largest natural gas reserves (27% of the full). It has the 2d-largest volume of coal reserves and the eighth-largest volume of oil reserves. Approximately 60% of the subsidies become to natural gas, with the residuum spent on oil extraction and electricity, including renewable power generators.

Tax policy of member states

Notes: CO2 emission, gas reserve, coal reserve, oil reserve, solar free energy, carbon taxation, hydrocarbon subsidies.

Conclusion

As the warmest decade on record — marked by extreme storms, deadly wildfires from Siberia to Brazil's Amazons to Commonwealth of australia, and heavy flooding — came to a closure, a study stated that decarbonization of the free energy sector is not yet on the horizon for Russia, which retains a skeptical attitude toward the problem of global climatic change. The share of solar in the earth'southward energy balance is insignificant and not expected to exceed 1% by 2040, driving Hydrocarbon CO2 emissions higher and college.

Russia ratified the Paris Agreement during the longest-ever United Nations climate summit, which ended without a bargain to regulate carbon markets. The major powers, behind over 75% of global emissions, are set to miss emissions reduction goals, with the U.South. pulling out to undermine the climate pact despite developing a revolutionary solar cell technology with an efficiency of 27.3% to 32% that could crush the free energy market.

Amidst European Central Bank officials urging European banks to develop a cheaper culling to Facebook'due south Libra stablecoin, which could potentially reach 2.vii billion users (35% of the world'southward population), Russia is taking the pb in issuing a multinational stablecoin backed past bolt.

Russia's cyber-initiative connects some of the most promising hydrocarbon rich economies stretching across Eurasia, Africa and South America. Separately, BRICS fellow member states all have plans to issue central bank digital currencies as well. As a result, more than 41% of the world volition be using electric energy-intensive blockchain and smart contract technology. This initiative will potentially farther heave scientific discipline and applied science development, create new jobs, improve trade efficiency among fellow member states past replacing other fiat currencies used in trade settlements, and create a technologically resourceful trade cake. Nonetheless, if such technology is fueled by hydrocarbon energy produced and heavily subsidized by fellow member states, temperatures are expected to rise 3.2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels past the end of the century, according to the latest emissions gap report. Especially in lite of the fact that Russia, Brazil, Mainland china and South Africa are non on track for a 1.5-degree world.

A decisive role could be played by BRICS in finding innovative solutions to the functioning of the electric current global framework, peculiarly in transitioning to green economies. Russia's Ministry of Economic Development recently published an action programme to mitigate risks associated with present and futurity climate modify, citing among other things, the government'due south calculation of the risk of Russian products becoming unable to compete if they fail to meet new climate-related standards. Ending subsidies for fossil fuels could reduce global emissions by betwixt ane% and 11% by 2030, the U.N. has institute. Eliminating greenhouse gases over the adjacent twenty years could help Earth avoid between 0.iii and 0.viii degrees of warming by 2050, as research suggests.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author'south solitary and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Selva Ozelli, Esq., CPA is an international tax attorney and CPA who frequently writes almost tax, legal and accounting problems for Tax Notes, Bloomberg BNA, other publications and the OECD.