PJSC Polyus’ decarbonisation plans have accelerated with an agreement for the supply of environmentally friendly electricity generated from PJSC RusHydro’s Sayano-Shushenskaya hydro power plant to its Krasnoyarsk Business Unit (KBU) in Russia.

The agreement, which assumes the provision of approximately 1 billion kWh of energy to KBU in 2021, means up to 90% of the electricity demand from the company’s production facilities will be met by renewable sources.

Once supplies under this contract commence, 100% of the electricity consumed by Polyus’ largest producing assets, Olimpiada (pictured) and Blagodatnoye, will be renewable.

Based on this estimate, KBU expects to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2021 by almost half, while company-wide GHG emissions may decrease by a third compared with the previous year.

The agreement will cover the period until December 31, 2021, with the possibility of an extension, Polyus said.

In 2020, Polyus and RusHydro signed a five-year bilateral agreement for the sale and purchase of electricity produced by hydroelectric power plants on the territory of a technologically isolated electric power system in the Magadan region. The volume of electricity supplied under this agreement was greater than 300 million kWh/y.

Pavel Grachev, Chief Executive Officer of PJSC Polyus, commented: “This deal marks the transition of Polyus’ core business unit to renewable energy sources and represents a landmark event for our company. Climate change is a global challenge, and it is important that as a responsible business we support the decarbonisation of the global economy. For this reason, we are choosing to power our production assets with energy sources that will minimise our greenhouse gas emissions.”