Cop31: The climate lessons from Russia's war on Ukraine

Swedish activist Greta Thunberg poses for selfies as she arrives at Cop31 in Antalya, Turkey,on Tuesday. Picture: Ozan Kose/AFP via Getty Images

A “back-up” gas supply that helped Ukraine survive attacks on its energy infrastructure offers a lesson for other countries, Cop31 has heard.

A panel discussion was held at the key UN climate conference on Tuesday featuring representatives from Ukraine’s government, academics, and senior figures from Naftogaz and Ukrnafta, the two main oil and gas companies in Ukraine.

Ukraine’s deputy minister for the economy and environment, Oleksandr Krasnolutskyi, told delegates post-war sustainable facilities could make Ukraine competitive in the future.

“The post-war reconstruction of energy facilities should be based on green technologies and new standards,” he said.

“It will create a basis for competitiveness and give us other impetus for development.” 

Olena Pavlenko, president of the Ukrainian think tank DiXi Group, said there were several climate and energy lessons to be learned from Russia’s war on Ukraine.

She said gas “really helps Ukraine survive” during the full-scale invasion, and explained to the Irish Examiner Russia had exploited a deficit between energy generation in the west and energy demand in the east.

Ukraine, as a gas-producing country which used to produce 20bn cubic metres before February 2022, has used gas as a back-up because infrastructure was destroyed in targeted drone and rocket attacks.

“When you have huge attacks on the electricity system and on coal-fire generation, gas-fired generation is something which creates a back-up,” she said.

“So maybe a huge lesson learned from Ukraine for many other countries is that sometimes, in such cases, gas and fossil fuels are very much needed to cover short-term needs, for such crises as Ukraine is going through."

She said after gas prices rose after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, it was a “huge showcase of how important it is to build your own energy resilience”.

“That is when the European Union started to talk about decarbonisation."

Oleksii Riabchyn, director for international relations at Naftogaz, said the company had become a multi-energy agency since the full-scale invasion.

“We are trying to build the brightest future for Ukrainians, trying to earn good money because this is what business should do, to pay dividends, to pay taxes, to pay wages, to pay salaries for the army while simultaneously trying to survive the next winter,” he said.

“We believe in our victory, we believe that [decarbonisation] will be part of the organisation and it is interconnected with our security — this comes hand in hand with digitalisation which is really about renewables, flexible energy generation.” 

Discussions on the second day of the Cop31 conference varied from tech companies on how to make data centres more sustainable, the disproportional effect climate disasters have on women and girls, to the climate “existential threat” faced by communities living on or around mountains.

Nepalese foreign affairs minister Shisir Khanal urged countries to recognise these communities at Cop31, after a glacier collapse resulted in floods that killed 1,500 people in August, with a further 5,000 still missing and the total damage estimated to be worth $2.5bn.