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Carbon taxes could hurt Russia more than sanctions, says oil tsar

(EurActiv, 24 Aug 2021) Igor Sechin, chief of oil giant Rosneft, has told the Kremlin that carbon border taxes like the European Union’s could inflict far greater damage to Russia’s economy than sanctions, the Kommersant newspaper reported on Monday (23 August).

The European Commission has outlined plans to impose a CO2 tariff on polluting goods from 2026 that will force some importers to pay carbon costs at the border on carbon-intensive products such as steel.

Moscow has said the tax could affect Russian goods worth $7.6 billion (€6.47bn), including iron ore, aluminium, pipes, electricity and cement, and that the tax could eventually be broadened to affect oil, gas and coal exports.

Sechin has told President Vladimir Putin the EU tax and the possibility of similar taxes elsewhere could cause “incomparably greater damage to the economy than illegal restrictions imposed on Russia and Russian companies,” Kommersant reported.

That was a reference to years of foreign sanctions on Russia that the West began imposing in 2014 to punish Moscow for annexing Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula.

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EurActiv, 24 Aug 2021: Carbon taxes could hurt Russia more than sanctions, says oil tsar