Strictly speaking, it is not money that makes the world go round, but energy. Ask any of the eight world leaders gathered in Japan this week about the toughest issue they've got to tackle, and will almost certainly answer: car fuel, electricity, heat, and industrial power.

Worldwide, high oil prices and global warming are pushing the issue of sustainability from the back burner to full heat. Russia, as the G8 member with the biggest reserves of oil and gas, is on the spot. Problem is, it is precisely the abundance of oil and gas that are keeping the development of alternative and renewable fuel from becoming a national priority. But that doesn't mean that people in Russia aren't looking for other ways to make their engines run.

"On a government level, things are going very slowly," says Igor Podgorny, a specialist in energy efficiency at Greenpeace in Moscow. "Where renewable energy is concerned, concentrated development is weak, despite the fact that Russia is a signatory to the Kyoto protocol."

Two years ago, one of Russia's economic experts gave a similar forecast. "The possible replacement of oil and gas with other energy resources in Russia is not a question of the next few days or years because Russia has huge hydrocarbon reserves and they are relatively cheap," Andrei Illarionov, President of the Economic Analysis Institute, said in April of 2006.

Podgorny cites figures from the Energy Ministry report that imply that Russia has the resources not just for abundant hydrocarbons, but renewable sources as well. "We have a stock of five times the amount of renewable and alternative energy that we are currently using," he told The Moscow News in a telephone interview. That means that some day, potentially, "innovational" energy resources can account for a lot more than 7 percent of consumed energy. According to the ministry's report, in some regions "use of non-traditional energy sources" might reach as much as 30 percent by 2030.

But in a country with so much energy that it needs a special consumption policy, who's using it more efficiently?

"In Russia there are businesses that opt for renewable energy sources, but they are not major businesses," says Podgorny, explaining that current energy legislation keeps the major players from changing over to "non-traditional" sources. But there is an abundance of small businesses that offer, for instance, solar panels that people can buy for their homes. On a small, non-centralized scale, there is some visible effort. The Moscow city government, for instance, is funding an experiment in using solar panels to heat homes. Another experimental project is the "green office," where employers are encouraged to adopt conservation strategies in the workplace. Last year, meanwhile, Mikhail Prokhorov, the chief of the Onexim investment fund, announced plans for the Megion Hydrogen Partnership - an effort to build a car park that would run on hydrogen in the Far East Khanty-Mansiysk town of Megion.

But with little large scale government support, the scientists are the ones who are at the forefront of searching for other sources of energy besides oil. Earlier this month, for instance, researchers at the Vinogradsky Institute of Microbiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences made a startling discovery: a rare, archeal microorganism that produces hydrogen by breaking down cellulose. The result? The U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute will continue researching the organism. Indeed, hydrogen could be all but a panacea in alternative energy. But there are two problems: it is highly combustible and difficult to contain conveniently in a car tank, and extremely costly to make. Hence the interest in an organism that can spew out hydrogen essentially by feeding on wood.

Yevgeny Korolyev, a researcher at Tekhnogaz GIAP, a company that develops DME (dimethyl ether) as part of the Karpov Institute of Chemistry Research in Moscow, described a problem common for scientists. "The higher the price for oil, the more interest there is in alternative fuel," he told The Moscow News. "The more interest there is, the more chances that our technologies will be applied." The problem is that while there might be great potential demand, the real demand is not dependable.

DME, a clean fuel derived by chemical conversion of natural gas or coal, is an isomer of ethanol (meaning it has the same atoms but a different molecular structure), and has the same fuel properties as propane-butane. Its advantages are attracting major energy companies in Europe: it does not emit any sulfur, nor does it generate carbon or any particulate matters. "Gas is the most economic source, but DME can also be derived from oil, coal, and biomass," says Korolyev.

But DME, like most alternative fuels, has its limits. Most notably, it is not yet appropriate for small cars and is developed more for trucks and buses. Equipping a vehicle to run on DME would also cost additional money.

Still, the fact that it can be derived from other sources than oil makes it a valuable fuel, especially for countries that lack their own hydrocarbons. China, for instance, has a national program to develop the coal sector in order to become less dependent on oil. In an economy with a surplus of hydrocarbons, such large-scale efforts are simply not viable.

There is one factor that could seriously affect demand for alternative fuel in Russia: parity in energy costs, something that is forecasted to happen within the next few years. The pressures of cost will drive the need for new sources of fuel.