Ukraine's unlikely ally against Russian attacks on energy sector — warm weather

Yahoo

31-01-2025

Nearly three years into the war, Ukrainians have grown used to bracing for brutal winters with electricity blackouts and heating cuts from Russian attacks on the country's energy infrastructure.
This winter was predicted to be one of the toughest ones of the war yet. In a worst-case scenario, blackouts were expected to reach 20 hours a day. Greenpeace warned in November that Ukraine's power grid faced a "heightened risk of catastrophic failure.'
But thanks to a combination of unseasonably warm weather, and Ukraine's ability to adapt to a third year of Russian campaigns against its energy system, the worst has not come to pass.
Since Russia began targeting Ukraine's energy infrastructure in late 2022, the country has learned to better protect the power grid, figuring out how to make repairs in record time following Russian strikes.
Climate change — which has been causing warmer winters each year in Ukraine — has also become Ukraine's unexpected ally in resisting Russia's tactic of freezing Ukrainians into submission.
'The fact that we have such warm weather of +6, +7 degrees Celsius (42-44 degrees Fahrenheit) is fantastically positive for us,' said Oleksandr Kharchenko, managing director of the Energy Industry Research Center, crediting the mild winter as a main factor for the lack of problems with power in Ukraine.
In the past, Ukraine had hot summers and cold winters, consistent with its mostly continental climate.
Snow and temperatures below zero degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit) characterized every winter, including the one in 2014 when the Euromaidan Revolution unfolded and protesters on Independence Square in Kyiv danced to patriotic chants to warm up.
Things are different now. Ukraine's Environment Ministry on Jan.19 went as far as to say in a social media post that, 'Due to global warming, there is no climatic winter in Ukraine (this year).'
'Due to global warming, there is no climatic winter in Ukraine (this year).'
'If the winter used to be a season of frost and snow, then now the weather often reminds of late autumn or early spring,' the ministry wrote.
The Central Geophysical Observatory declared 2024 'the warmest year on record' in Kyiv, with the December average at zero degrees Celsius. Temperatures were above zero every day the last week of January, a record for the country, the observatory said.
'Ukraine is one of the regions of the planet where the temperature has been rising at the highest rate over the past decade,' said Svitlana Krakovska, head of the applied climatology laboratory at the Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Institute.
'And the main warming occurs primarily in winter,' she was cited as having said in the ministry's post on social media.
Ukraine hasn't yet had to implement any country-wide rolling blackouts in 2025, according to open data collected by the Energy Map.
These scheduled limitations of electricity supply for businesses and households were put in place at various times throughout the previous years to cut the consumption in peak hours to avoid the collapse of the country's strained power system.
Hours-long blackouts were widely used throughout the country for much of the spring and summer of 2024 following Russia's bombing of power plants and transmission stations, and during scheduled repairs of the nuclear power plants. The power cuts were implemented sporadically throughout December.
'As you can see, electricity is now being supplied without restrictions almost all over the country, apart from the front-line regions, where the situation is difficult in general,' Kharchenko told the Kyiv Independent.
'As you can see, electricity is now being supplied without restrictions almost all over the country, apart from the front-line regions, where the situation is difficult in general.'
As the temperature continues to hover at or above zero, the country's energy system hasn't yet entered a red zone where it has to start cutting power.
'Every degree below zero Celsius requires an additional 200 megawatts (MW) of power,' he added. 'With our current operating capacities, we simply don't have enough (to cater) for temperatures of minus three and four degrees Celsius (24-26 degrees Fahrenheit) and below.'
Russia has regularly targeted Ukrainian critical infrastructure since it began its campaign in 2022, destroying over half of the country's pre-war power system capacities.
'In 2022-2023, Ukraine's power system lost about 21 gigawatts (GW) of capacity,' out of the 47 GW before the full-on war, wrote Oksana Zueva, a senior expert in open data at Kyiv-based think tank DiXi Group.
To take that much capacity out, Moscow carried out at least thirty massive attacks on energy facilities, according to open data gathered by the Energy Map.
The attacks evolved over time to use various weapons and tactics, while Russia's goal remained the same: plunging Ukraine into a humanitarian crisis, making regular citizens' lives as difficult as possible, and destabilizing the country before any possible peace talks in the future.
Around 10 GW of energy generation was knocked out in 2024 due to Russia's missile and drone attacks, the Energy Ministry told the Kyiv Independent.
Since mid-November, six massive attacks were launched by Russia over the two and a half months of this winter season, causing 'much greater damage and destruction than in previous years,' the ministry added. The attacks included anywhere between 70 to 90 cruise or ballistic missiles and 90 to 120 drones each time, as well as internationally banned cluster munitions.
'But they didn't reach their goals,' Kharchenko told the Kyiv Independent.
According to Kharchenko, Ukraine has also gotten much better in resisting Russia's attacks on energy in over two years since they began. It improved coordination with air defense protecting the power system and built some fortifications that have already proved effective.
Experience also helps when the attacks succeed: at this point, there are reserves of equipment to restore the damaged facilities and clear plans for bypassing them in the grid and restoring them as quickly as possible, Kharchenko said.
A lot of that equipment is pledged or financed by international partners, the Energy Ministry told the Kyiv Independent.
'In 2024, Ukrenergo's repair teams set an absolute record by replacing an autotransformer at one of its substations within three weeks,' Ukraine's state grid operator Ukrenergo told the Kyiv Independent.
'This included transportation, installation, and connection. For comparison, in EU countries, such works are carried out in three to four months,' the statement said.
Warm weather also contributed to the speed of repairs, Ukrenergo said.
However, with temperatures projected to drop in the coming days, Ukraine needs to secure its energy supply for any weather.
'For the Ukrainian power system to operate efficiently and confidently, we need to build about 4-4.5 GW of additional peaking power plants,' Kharchenko said.
Peaking power plants are meant to step in during peak periods of consumption to avoid blackouts. They should be able to quickly increase or decrease the energy output, which is impossible for the three Ukrainian-controlled nuclear power plants that currently supply up to 55-60% of the country's energy, according to Kharchenko.
Peaking power plants could be coal-based, hydroelectric, or gas-powered, Kharchenko added, as other types of power are either dependent on weather conditions or too long to develop.
But so far, it was coal-based thermal plants, hydroelectric plants, and the transmission grid around them that were targeted by Russian attacks the most.
Eighty percent of Ukraine's pre-war coal-fired power capacities were destroyed, though some of them were restored, Kharchenko said.
Nine Ukrainian hydroelectric plants remaining after Russia's destruction of the Kakhovka dam still generate up to 12% of the country's energy despite Russian attacks.
'Unfortunately, we can't build many of them,' Kharchenko said, referring to the limitations of the country's natural river resources needed to build more hydroelectric generation.
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