In a landmark development on the New Year for Russian state atomic energy corporation Rosatom’s renewable energy business, its wind power division, NovaWind, began supplying wind-generated electricity to DeloPorts from January 1, 2022, with the latter switching its KSK and NUTEP container terminals to electricity generated fully at wind farms.
KSK and NUTEP, thus, became the first large port infrastructure facilities in Russia to completely switch to renewable energy, a Rosatom statement said. The annual handling capacity of NUTEP is 700 thousand TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units), while the capacity of the KSK grain terminal is up to 7 million tons.
According to NovaWind, the potential reduction in CO2 emissions due to NUTEP and KSK switching to wind energy is likely to amount to 6.8 and 5.7 thousand tons of CO2 per year, respectively, as compared to traditional natural gas generation.
The agreement to power the largest terminals in the Azov-Black Sea region of Russia with wind energy was signed in April 2021 between Russia’s largest transport and logistics holding Management Company Delo and Rosatom subsidiary Atomenergoprom.
“Rosatom is consistently implementing a strategy for low-carbon energy production based on nuclear and wind power generation. NovaWind contributes to reducing carbon footprint in the Russian energy sector and provides partners with additional tools to achieve sustainable development goals”, NovaWind Deputy CEO for Development and International Business, Grigory Nazarov, said in a statement.
DeloPorts CEO Igor Yakovenko said: “On January 1, 2022, our terminals shifted to electricity generated from wind. The ‘green port’ project is still a work in progress. This is especially important in view of plans to modernise our enterprises: their productivity will go up, while the environmental impact will decrease.”
According to Rosatom, the “green port” project will enable the use of electricity generated from low-carbon energy sources to facilitate exports from the Russia with minimal CO2 emissions, which, in turn, will affect the reduction in NUTEP and KSK’s estimate indicators in reporting on indirect greenhouse gas emissions and other indirect carbon emissions for their customers. Depending on the methodology adopted by the European Union (EU), the indicators could reduce the “carbon tax” on exports to the EU for Russian exporters.
