Russia missed a renewable energy target for 2024
Russia missed a renewable energy target it set for 2024, and instead of trying again at the same level, the government locked in a lower one. Climate Action Tracker, an independent assessment group, states that Russia aimed for 4.5% of electricity generation from renewable sources by 2024, not counting the hydropower dams that already supply most of the clean electricity in the country, and implementation fell behind that goal.
The Ministry of Energy in Russia set the replacement. Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin signed the Energy Strategy to 2050, the new national energy plan, on April 12, 2025, on an order from the President of the Russian Federation. That plan targets wind and solar power at just 3.3% of electricity generation by 2042, not a renewed push back toward the missed 4.5% figure but a lower number entirely.
Source 2 independently states the same 3.3% figure for 2042. Both targets exclude hydropower.
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| Target for 2024 | 4.5 |
| Target for 2042 | 3.3 |
The target fell even as officials talked bigger just 2 years earlier
The 3.3% figure is smaller than what officials in Russia were saying only 2 years before the strategy was approved. A Ministry of Energy official floated a renewable share of 12.5% of electricity generation by 2050, not counting large hydropower, in January 2023, according to a working paper from the Energy Innovation Reform Project. The stated government target for 2035 at that time was 6%, also excluding large hydro. The ambition shrank between that 2023 talk and the 2025 strategy, rather than growing toward it.
Fossil fuels and nuclear leave little room for wind and solar
The reason so little room exists for renewables shows up in the full generation mix the strategy plans for 2042. Wind and solar reach only 3.3% of electricity generation, nuclear power rises to 23.5% of generation from 19% today, and fossil fuel generation, electricity made by burning coal, oil and natural gas, still supplies 57.7% of the total, barely below the 63% it supplies today, according to Enerdata, an energy data and news publisher that reviewed the strategy projections directly. Wind and solar remain the smallest slice of electricity generation in Russia by far.
Wind and solar are the smallest slice of the 4, well behind fossil fuels, nuclear and hydro.
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| Fossil fuel generation | 57.7 |
| Nuclear | 23.5 |
| Hydro | 15.5 |
| Wind and solar | 3.3 |
Construction did not slow even as the goal did
The pattern is not that construction of renewable power stopped. Renewable capacity outside large hydropower grew more than 4 times between 2014 and 2022, adding 4.4 gigawatts, a unit equal to 1 billion watts of generating capacity, while large hydropower capacity itself grew only about 3%, adding 1.6 gigawatts, over the same period, the Energy Innovation Reform Project working paper states. What moved in the opposite direction is the target the government set for where that growth should end up, not the growth itself, and fossil fuels are due to keep most of the share of electricity they generate in Russia today.