Ukraine: war makes just energy transition more urgent

By Simon Pirani

Even in the midst of war, there is a struggle for Ukraine’s energy future.

It’s one that international allies of Ukraine’s social movements need to pay attention to, because states like the US and UK, and international organisations like the European Union, will be influential in how that tussle turns out.

War has taken its toll on energy infrastructure. Photo from Ecoaction

In almost every country in the world there is a battle for influence between partisans of renewable, decentralised energy production, and those of legacy nuclear or carbon-intensive methods, who often have deeper pockets and stronger political connections.

But in Ukraine, that struggle is intensified by the unprecedented catastrophe inflicted on its energy sector by the Russian military, and the resultant urgency to invest.

“No European power system has ever suffered, endured and withstood such large-scale destruction, including during the first and second world wars”, a report by the Energy Charter Secretariat, an inter-governmental body, stated last month.

In May this year, more than half of Ukraine’s pre-invasion electricity generation capacity (27 gigawatts or GW), was occupied or damaged. That was before the disastrous destruction of the Kakhovka dam on 6 June, likely from within. Fears of sabotage at the Zaporizhya nuclear plant, Ukraine and Europe’s largest, remain.

We need social change – not miracles

Review of No Miracles Needed: how today’s technology can save our climate and clean our air, by Mark Jacobson (Cambridge University Press, 2023). First published in the Ecologist

The main barriers to reaching 100% clean, renewable energy provision the world over “are neither technical nor economic; instead they are social and political”, Mark Jacobson finally declares, more than four-fifths of the way through this book.

Before seeing that, readers should have ploughed through 13 of the 15 chapters, which describe the physical and technical properties of fossil-fuel-dominated energy provision, and contrast to it Jacobson’s proposal for a system powered 100% by wind, water and solar sources (WWS).

Reyajudin Ansari cleans the solar panels on his rooftop in Jharkand, India. Photo: Karishma Mehrotra/ Scroll.in

The proposal is based on computer modelling by Jacobson and his colleagues at Stanford university in California, showing that wind farms, solar panels, hydro, tidal energy and other renewable resources could produce sufficient energy to replace all fossil fuels.

The modelling is controversial: other researchers have questioned the assumptions made, especially about how electricity could be stored and transported.

Some of Jacobson’s arguments about technologies make a refreshing change from most narratives associated with the world’s “green new deals”, though: he argues against using gas, direct air capture, carbon capture, nuclear fuels and biofuels for electricity generation – all beloved of, and hyped by, oil companies, politicians and technomodernists.

But his exclusive, even wooden, focus on technologies is combined with a stubborn lack of attention to the social and political transformations needed for society to dump fossil fuels. Even when he acknowledges social and political obstructions to change, his comments on them are brief and superficial.

Community action kills off hydrogen greenwash plan

Community mobilisation in Whitby, Merseyside, has forced the UK government to drop plans to test hydrogen heating in 2000 homes there.

Lord Martin Callanan, energy security minister, announced in a tweet on Monday that the trial had “no strong local support” and would be scrapped.

Campaigners against the hydrogen-for-homes scheme in Whitby, Merseyside. Photo from HyNot facebook feed

The decision follows months of campaigning by Whitby residents, who feared that the HyNet scheme to convert the gas grid to hydrogen would bring a greater risk of explosions, nitrous oxide emissions and uncertainty.

They were strongly supported by the HyNot campaign group – and by energy systems researchers who oppose hydrogen for home heating. They point out that a combination of insulation and electric heat pumps is four or five times more energy-efficient than hydrogen, and effectively reduces fossil fuel use.

Jan Rosenow of the Regulatory Assistance Project and Tom Baxter of Strathclyde University, who are among the many specialists who have lambasted the government’s approach, spoke at a virtual public meeting in Whitby called by residents in November last year.

The government’s plan has obstructed the use of tried, tested and truly carbon-free technologies, such as heat pumps, for the sake of a survival strategy for oil and gas companies.

Governments are reinforcing fossil fuels’ power. We need to build alliances against it

In Part One of this article, I comment on the “energy crisis” and suggest some principles around which we might bring together wider sections of society, to push forward the transition away from fossil fuels. These are practical suggestions and feedback is welcome. In Part Two, I offer a view of the relationship between the climate crisis and Russia’s war in Ukraine, as I don’t think these two shocking events can be understood separately from each other.

The article is based on an on-line talk I gave on 4 July at the Humanitas Unisinos Institute (IHU) of the University of Vale do Rio dos Sinos, Brazil, and I thank my friends there for inviting me. (Update, 2 August: the article has now been published in Portuguese, in the institute’s on-line journal here. A video of the talk, in Portuguese only, is here.) Simon Pirani.

Part One. “Energy crisis” and the transition

The combined effect of western sanctions, Russian “self sanctions” and market volatility last year produced a sharp spike in gas prices and an increase in oil prices. There were fears that the shortage of gas supplies to Europe would result in some rationing in the winter, but these were not realised. The same problems could be replicated this coming winter.

For the longer term, the western powers stated their determination to reduce their dependence on Russian oil and gas supplies. Most, but not all, of the large western oil companies said that they would sell or close down their oil producing operations in Russia.

Demonstration in London in April. Photo from Extinction Rebellion Lincolnshire

Politicians and company executives presented this to the public as an “energy crisis”. And although the disruption to oil and gas markets is real enough, this “crisis” is also in some respects a mirage that serves corporate power. We need to question this way of looking at things, for at least these four reasons.

First. The most serious effects of the war were not only about energy, but – apart from the horrendous destruction in Ukraine itself – (a) the human cost to millions of people who have fled Ukraine as refugees, and (b) the impact on food markets in north Africa especially, due to the constraints on Russian and Ukrainian exports of agricultural products.

Second. The increase in retail prices of gas and electricity for households, especially in Europe, resulted from decisions by large energy corporations, working in liberalised markets, and from decisions of governments who regulate those markets. The war’s influence was only indirect. Some governments decided to protect households from these impacts, and all governments could have done so.