Establishment of the Kuzbass Carbon Polygon Approved

The Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation approved the proposal of KuzSTU and ANO "NOTS Kuzbass" to create the Kuzbass carbon test site in the Kemerovo region.

At the end of 2023 a meeting of the Expert Council under the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation on the issues of scientific support for the development of carbon balance control technologies was held. Here an application for the creation of a carbon polygon in the Kemerovo region prepared by specialists of Kuzbass State Technical University together with scientific and technological partners was approved.

This initiative was supported by the Governor of Kuzbass Sergey Tsivilyov and is of great importance for our region in terms of the global climate agenda.  

“There is a growing interest in climate projects around the world. We need to know the potential for carbon sequestration of natural objects and that is why we are studying the balance of greenhouse gases at carbon polygons, which have already been established in 15 regions of the country”, – said Nikolay Durmanov, the moderator of the meeting and special representative of the Russian Ministry of Education and Science on biological and environmental safety.

In his opinion, the polygon should be multidisciplinary and be of interest not only from the point of view of fundamental science but also generate technologies that have economic prospects and contribute to the reduction of climate taxes. One of the important results of the work may be electronic assistants that will use big data and artificial intelligence tools to help reorganize industrial sectors and form optimal technological schemes for creating climate projects.

Kuzbass Polytech is a member of the CED scientific and educational consortium for reducing anthropogenic impact on the environment. Its tasks include development of climate projects and training of engineering specialists for carbon polygons – territories with a unique ecosystem created for monitoring and control of climatically active gases.

The Kuzbass carbon test site will provide a modern scientific and educational infrastructure for the development and testing of technologies for monitoring the balance of climatically active gases in forest ecosystems based on automated collection, storage, analysis and mathematical processing of multimodal data using digital platforms, mechanisms for carbon dioxide depositing will be worked out, and personnel training for the Kuzbass industry will be organized.

“Of course, it is very significant for our university that we have joined such a serious federal project which is completely new for the region. Moreover, this project is not simply ecological, but is related to very urgent climatic issues, including carbon balance control”, – says Alexey Yakovlev, Rector of KuzSTU. – “It is also important that our students will take part in this project: there will be special educational programs and scientific and production practices organized for them. Thus, our university will prepare modern qualified specialists capable of dealing with serious environmental and climatic problems of Kuzbass”.

“Indigenous fir and pine forests on rock dumps of different ages were chosen as objects for the study of climatically active gases in Kuzbass”, – said the project leader, Yuri Manakov, Doctor of Biological Sciences.

Low-mountain black taiga in the Kemerovo region is a unique phenomenon caused by the location of the main mountain systems of the Kuznetsk Alatau, Gornaya Shoria and Salair ridge which create a beneficial moisture conditions for the development of taiga large-grass ecosystems.  Another part of the research program is disturbed territories with areas of forest reclamation. In each case it is necessary to determine the gas balance and the ability of natural and regeneration forests to store carbon in biomass and soil. This information is necessary to create forest-climatic designs on dump surfaces and zonal soils. The main feature of our application, in addition to the unique ecosystems, is the emphasis on working with climate monitoring data.

Kuzbass Polytech is the project operator, organizational support is provided by ANO "NOTS Kuzbass" . The consortium also includes the Federal Research Center for Coal and Coal Chemistry of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Kemerovo State University, the Federal Research Center for Information and Computing Technologies, the Institute for Monitoring of Climatic and Environmental Systems of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Soil Science and Agrochemistry of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the "SDS-Ugol" Holding Company, and others. 

Nowadays, the program for the creation and operation of the carbon polygon designed for 2024-2026 is being prepared and agreed with the Expert Council of the Russian Ministry of Education and Science. It will be sponsored by the federal budget and industrial partners.