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Ukrainian renewable energy generation: a bulwark against Russian attacks?
16/8/2023
8 min read
Feature
The Russian war machine has purposefully targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with centralised power sites an easy target. In response, the Ukrainian government and power producers are discovering that distributed or on-site energy generation from renewable sources make the infrastructure much more resilient and offer many other advantages besides. Dylan Carter reports.
Russia military attacks on Ukraine’s critical energy infrastructure may be paving the way for the victim country to build a sustainable decentralised renewable energy-based electricity system.
By striking Ukrainian energy infrastructure, Russia hopes to destroy the will of the Ukrainian population, who have remained resilient against Russian occupation and attacks against civilian infrastructure. Many now consider these attacks to be a tertiary front of the conflict, often dubbed the ‘energy front’ by the government.
The ‘energy front’
According to Volodymyr Kudrytsky, Chairman of the Management Board of Ukraine’s electricity transmission system operator (TSO) Ukrenergo, all of Ukraine’s thermal and hydroelectric generation plants, as well as substations operated by the company, had been damaged at some point in 2022.