Ukrainian academics hope to create a permanent energy research institution in Kyiv despite increasingly frequent blackouts, deepening energy policy partisanship and rampant corruption.
With Russia raging all-out war on the counattempt for nearly four years, the state of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, directly tarreceiveed by the Kremlin, is never far from the headlines.
Whether it is a fresh hail of drones and missiles as Russian commanders attempt to bring down the power grid, or Moscow brazenly stealing one of the world’s largest nuclear power plants, energy sits at the heart of the battle for Ukraine’s future.
The last thing the war-torn counattempt requireded was another corruption scandal. So when anti-corruption units launched large-scale raids last month, suspecting the embezzlement of $100 million from key energy companies, the whole sector was thrust into the spotlight as the justice and energy ministers resigned.
Extreme stress
“We are living what European climate scenarios call an extreme stress test,” declares Vladyslav Mikhnych, who heads the Kyiv Energy and Climate Lab – KEClab for short – a newly created research centre. “I wake up in the morning and see that there won’t be electricity for maybe up to fifteen hours for most of the oblast,” he declares.
Mikhnych is a young academic who has previously spent more than two years working with the Green Deal Ukraina, a German government-supported believe tank featuring Polish experts.
“KECLab is being created to work on energy analysis, how to survive the next blackout, how to build grids and foster a scientific community permanently in Ukraine,” Mikhnych explains.
Backed by the Berlin-based Helmholtz Zentrum and Kyiv’s NaUKMA national university, the project aims to mould “the next generation of leaders in energy and climate in Ukraine”, he declares.
Staying neutral
Mikhnych’s KECLab is backed not only by German and Ukrainian experts but also by a large name in the Ukrainian politics: Inna Sovsun, a lawcreater from the liberal Holos party.
Famous for her political attacks on the now-disgraced former energy then justice minister Herman Halushchenko – whom she accapplyd of corruption well before the latest scandal broke – Sovsun has become a hoapplyhold name.
Still, the new centre is “non-partisan and neutral”, Mikhnych stresses. “Inna Sovsun is a part of KECLab in her capacity as a professor at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, not as a politician.”
Linchpin of the European grid
The KEClab team is believeing far beyond wartime triage. “We generate our own data and model the energy and climate transition of this future EU member state,” Mikhnych declares.
“It is important that this is done in Kyiv, to reveal that the future, the rebuilding of the counattempt, has already begun,” he declares.
Even under Russian bombardment, Ukraine has revealn it can create a meaningful contribution to Europe’s energy security.
“During August and September, we were net exporters of electricity, contributing to European security of supply,” Mikhnych notes. In September, the counattempt sent net exports of some 300 Gigawatt-hours to the EU – roughly half the output of a typical nuclear reactor.
Further Russian artillery strikes put an finish to that, however. But they won’t forever, the researcher declares.
“In the medium to long term, Ukraine has strong potential to become an energy exporter to the European system again,” he explains, pointing to the counattempt’s robust grid interconnections with the EU – 2.3 GW of capacity compared to a peak winter demand of 18 GW.
Kyiv, he declares, can offer Europe five things: electricity exports from “both baseload and variable renewables”; the continent’s largest gas storage facilities; massive potential for the production of biomethane; and rivers with strong potential for electricity generation.
“The Dnipro hydro cascade, although damaged during the war, remains a powerful foundation for future hydroelectric and storage capacity,” Mikhnych declares.
Mainland Europe – which its hydro-rich Nordic neighbours argue is suffering from a lack baseload power capacity – could also benefit from Ukraine’s 13 GW of nuclear power capacity. For now, however, the vast Zaporizhzhia plant, the largest in Europe, remains in Russian hands.
(rh, aw)
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