KAZAKHSTAN’S ROAD TO NET ZERO GHG EMISSIONS

Abstract

In December 2020 President of Kazakhstan Mr. Tokayev announced that Kazakhstan would become carbon neutral country by 2060. This work aims to investigate how to reach carbon neutrality in Kazakhstan and it is a continuation of the “Kazakhstan’s Road to Net Zero GHG Emission Vision” project that was initiated when President had declared carbon neutrality aim.

This is a very ambitious aim given that con- siderable amount of energy in Kazakhstan is

generated using coal power plants. The main challenges that are faced by Kazakhstan are high dependence on coal for electricity and heat generation, lack of funds to invest in

renewable energy resources, transport, inef- ficiency of the government spending on miti- gation activities, high emissions in cropland.

Kazakhstan will have to find money to cut off coal use and transit to carbon neutral technologies to produce energy in an efficient way with minimal damage to economy. This project investigates how to reach carbon neutrality in the most efficient and cost-effective way. The project develops Kazakhstan’s carbon neutrality path using both short and long term vision. In the context of the COP event held in Glasgow in November 2021, Kazakhstan’s approach to carbon neutrality might be interesting to other countries. The results of this work were presented COP 26 in Glasgow, UK. The report is divided into chapters. First several chapters investigate solutions in Energy, Transport, Agriculture and Waste sectors. Further general issues such as carbon trading system, technology transfer and financial topics are analyzed. And finally regional cooperation options are discussed.