It has been a year of horror for the Ukrainian people, following the invasion by Russian forces last February. The damage to buildings, infrastructure, and civil society will take decades to fix, and the human cost may never be fully tallied. The war has also drastically altered the political, technological, and economic landscape of Europe, and inevitably, impacted the world’s ongoing climate crisis. In November, Climate Focus calculated that the first seven months of the war had released about 100 million tons of carbon dioxide—about the same as the Netherlands over the same period. But direct emissions are only part of the war’s carbon story, which is unfolding in surprising ways. Could the war spark a global energy transition? Or corner the world in a fossil fuel trap?
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The Initial Shock
1. War looks a lot like natural disaster. Sudden devastation, an economy in tatters, death, and migration. Alongside the human tragedy of an earthquake or hurricane, the carbon costs of extreme events is well known. Studying disasters around the world spanning 30 years, scientists at the University of Business and Economics in Beijing found that natural disasters significantly reduce CO2 emissions. Ukraine’s civilian economy is virtually at a standstill, and Russia’s carbon footprint will likely also shrink from trade restrictions and depopulation, according to a report at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “But that can hardly be considered genuine decarbonization,” its author warns.
2. War has its own unique carbon dynamics. The actual mechanics of warfare—all the bombs and shells, plus fuel for tanks and planes—represent less than 10% of the war’s overall emissions, according to the Climate Focus report. Untamed fires accounted for nearly 25 million tons of CO2 emissions up to November, and methane leaking from the Nord Stream gas pipelines another 15 million tons of CO2 equivalent. But as with most natural disasters, repairing civilian infrastructure and housing will be the biggest carbon source in the Ukraine invasion. On one hand, about half of all emissions will come from reconstruction. On the other, building back using low or negative carbon construction technologies could slash those figures, and help Ukraine leapfrog the rest of Europe in energy efficiency.
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