Starting in 2027, Russian airlines will have to choose: either use low-carbon fuel or offset their climate footprint by purchasing carbon units. To get this mechanism working, Russia’s Ministry of Transport is setting up a coordination center, while Gazprom Neft is preparing its own platform for assessing biofuel. Both initiatives were discussed at the RuCORS forum in St. Petersburg.
Who the new rules affect. The global CORSIA standard applies to operators whose annual emissions exceed 10,000 tonnes of CO₂ and whose aircraft have a certified takeoff mass of 5,700 tonnes or more. Formally a climate regulation, it functions in practice as an economic filter determining access to international routes and a carrier’s cost level.
What the coordination center is tasked with. The body, operating under the Ministry of Transport’s Scientific Center, will maintain a registry of companies subject to the standard, receive and verify their reporting based on data from Rosaviatsia, and calculate compensation volumes. A separate line of work involves securing international recognition for Russia’s carbon unit registry. Deputy Transport Minister Vladimir Poteshkin warned that if data submission is delayed, ICAO will calculate emissions itself, and compensation amounts will turn out higher.
Documents and infrastructure. Launching the system will require a federal law and three subordinate regulations. The country already has a voluntary emissions reduction mechanism and a carbon unit registry in place. Veronika Khodyreva, head of the civil aviation department, emphasized that the goal is not a single standalone regulation but a coherent framework: monitoring, verification, reporting, carbon unit handling, and emission reduction tools.
Betting on biofuel. An alternative path is aviation SAF (sustainable aviation fuel). To confirm its sustainability, ICAO requires certification. Currently, such assessment can only be obtained at foreign centers, which is why Gazprom Neft proposed its own open platform, available to all market participants. It is meant to track emissions reduction across the fuel’s entire life cycle — from field to aircraft tank.
Accumulated experience. Levan Kadagidze, the company’s head of commercial operations, noted that Gazprom Neft was the first in the country to establish production of marine fuel from plant-based feedstock, and subsequently developed the formulation and conducted testing for Russia’s first domestic aviation SAF. International recognition of domestic certification would open the way to expanding these projects.
Implementing CORSIA is a test of coordination. The state needs to create clear rules and secure recognition of its registry at ICAO; airlines need to establish monitoring and compensation processes; and science needs to provide the methodologies. Whether Russian carriers remain full-fledged players in the international market depends on this combination of efforts.
Source: Ministry of Transport of Russia
Image: Alexander Paklin
