5. Environmental sustainability of Russia’s energy policies 1 Nina Tynkkynen and Pami Aalto INTRODUCTION This chapter addresses the environmental sustainability of Russia’s energy policies. Focusing mainly on national level developments in Russia, we will scrutinize in particular the role of energy efficiency, savings and renewable energy in the country. On this basis we will assess to what extent an ‘environ- mental sustainability frame’ (see Chapter 2) is emerging to guide the forma- tion of energy policies in Russia (for the more global picture of Russian energy policies in the context of climate change, see Chapter 10). The promotion of energy efficiency, savings and renewable energy is conditioned by both constraints and opportunities within the policy environ- ment, including its resource geographic, financial, institutional and ecological dimensions. To fully account for these dimensions of the policy environment we will use primary data such as official documents, reports and statistics; and interviews with Russian energy policy actors and experts, as well as with Finnish experts and industry representatives familiar with energy sector coop- eration with Russia, conducted in St. Petersburg, Moscow and various loca- tions in Finland in summer 2009. As the environmental sustainability of Russian energy policy is an area on which relatively few studies are available in English, we will also make use of what to external observers may prove to be a surprisingly rich debate in Russia, referring in parallel to Anglophone studies by Western institutions and other research. After this introductory section, the Russian national understandings of sustainable development and environmental sustainability of energy are discussed against the backdrop of the global debate on this subject. Second, we introduce the resource geographic, financial, institutional and ecological dimensions of the policy environment that constrain and/or enable the evolu- tion of an environmental sustainability frame in the energy efficiency and renewable energy fields of Russia’s energy policies. Finally, in the concluding section we argue that although energy efficiency and energy savings have become high priorities for Russia – while renewable energy is emerging on a 92