Sources for the energy of changes

The 23rd UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany, came to a close on November 17. It was the largest forum ever held in Germany. Representatives of 197 countries, which had ratified the Paris Agreement, were working out for two weeks the concrete mechanisms that would help combat climate change.

“We have two options: either to find a new planet or to protect ours from anthropogenic interference. Climate is now changing faster than we manage to explore all the impacts and consequences of this change for both ecosystems and humankind. This is why it is very important that all negotiations are productive,” says Svitlana Krakovska, representative of Ukraine on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

PARTICULARITIES OF THE CONFERENCE

This year the UN Climate Change Conference was to be held in the Republic of Fiji, but the archipelago turned out unprepared to receive 25,000 people. So it was decided to relocate the forum to Bonn, the seat of the Secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

To admit all the conference participants, the city put up pavilions with an overall area of 55,000 square meters, while the organization of this event cost a total 117 million euros.

Fiji still presided over the conference because climate change poses a serious threat to the very existence of the archipelago consisting of about 300 islands. Fiji was struck by Cyclone Winston in 2016 which left 13,000 residents homeless and 42 people dead.

Photo by Oleh NYCH

The most resounding event just a day before the conclusion of the UN climate talks in Bonn was the announcement of the UK and Canada about forming the Powering Past Coal Alliance aimed at phasing out coal from power generation before 2030 and switching to renewable sources of energy.

Austria, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Costa Rica, Finland, France, Italy, the Marshall Islands, Mexico, Switzerland, as well as Vancouver, Alberta, Washington, British Columbia, Quebec, and Ontario joined the alliance. Fiji, the COP23 host, also became a party to the alliance.

WHAT IS THE ROLE OF UKRAINE AT THE TALKS?

This year Ukraine delegated 19 representatives with Ostap Semerak, Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources, at the head to the talks.

The minister said in his official speech that “in spite of Russian aggression, the government and the people are determined to resolve the problem of climate change and low-carbon development.” He also pointed out that Ukraine is ready to support Poland in preparing the UN Climate Change Conference 2018 but did not specify what this support will consist in.

In addition to the official delegation, representatives of nongovernmental organizations, including the Ukrainian Climate Network, also attended this conference.

“Our No. 1 task is to analyze the course of the talks, the attitudes of other countries, and to assess our country’s position. If we don’t do this, all kinds of things can be said in Ukraine – so we are trying to form an independent position of our own,” says Iryna Stavchuk, executive director NGO Ekodiya and coordinator of Climate Action Network organizations in Eastern Europe, who has been attending UN conferences since 2006.

According to the climate change expert, if activists notice that a country is taking a destructive attitude, they try to meet the official delegation and explain to the public why this attitude is out of place.

“We are working very actively with the Ukrainian government in the field of power efficiency because we share the same goal. As for the climate sphere, I can’t say we share the goal with the Ukrainian delegation. Although the delegation of Ukraine represents the interests of the environmental protection ministry, it in fact serves the ministry of energy whose goal is not to take commitments and not to promise any actions,” Stavchuk explains.

The expert emphasizes that Ukraine promises within the framework of the Paris Agreement to essentially reduce emissions, but it no longer needs to do so. For, in reality, our economy has fallen do deeply since 1990 that this “reduction” in fact means a 40-percent rise in emissions.

On its part, the Ministry of Environmental Protection assures us that it is a justifiable target, taking into account the military and political situation in the country and the necessity to revitalize the economy and raise the living standards.

At the same time, independent experts emphasize that some of the ministry’s actions are positive, for example, the fact that Ukraine is one of the first European countries to have fully ratified the Paris Agreement. Besides, Minister of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources Ostap Semerak said during the climate talks that Ukraine is prepared to revise the national emissions reduction target.

“It is necessary now to integrate the question of climate and emissions reduction into various economic sectors and into the strategies of agriculture and forestry. It is up to the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Natural Resources to put this information across,” Ukrainian Climate Network activists say.

WHAT CLIMATE CHANGES ARE AFFECTING UKRAINE?

Svitlana Krakovska, senior research associate at the Ukrainian Hydro-Meteorological Institute affiliated with the State Service for Emergencies and the National Academy of Sciences, representative of Ukraine on the IPCC, says that Ukrainians could have particularly felt climate changes in the past few years.

“First of all, extreme weather phenomena are on the rise. Early frosts may come after relatively high temperatures, and the plants that have already grown and even blossomed will be destroyed,” Krakovska says.

The pattern of precipitations is changing. The Ukrainians can also see a paradoxical phenomenon: droughts and extremely heavy rainfalls are on the rise at the same time. To avoid negative consequences, it is necessary, in particular, to modernize urban sewerages which are incapable now of receiving a month’s rate of rainfall in a day.

“The latest research in Europe shows that summer heat waves mostly affect urban dwellers, especially those who live on the uppermost stories of high-rises. And the majority of Ukraine’s population reside in the cities,” the climatologist says.

According to the Ukrainian Hydro-Meteorological Center, the average yearly temperature has risen by 0.8 degrees Celsius and the average winter temperature by almost 2 degrees Celsius in the past 20 years. These changes have already disrupted the rhythm of seasonal phenomena, such as snowfalls, springtime floods, blossoming, and duration of the vegetation period as a whole. Experts forecast further increases in yearly maximum and minimum temperatures – in other words, winters will be milder and shorter and summers longer and hotter.

This will reduce the productivity of agriculture, one of Ukraine’s most important economic sectors, and the amount of potable water, as well as increase the number of forest fires.

WHY IS CLIMATE CHANGING?

World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) data show that our planet has lost a half of its biodiversity in the past 40 years due to anthropogenic interference and climate change.

Climate changes have been caused by human-induced carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere. About 2,000 researchers have been addressing this problem for about 20 years within the framework of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This organization was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for research in the sphere of climate change.

These researchers also include Ukrainian experts. Academics analyze all the achievements in the field of climate change and publish a comprehensive report once in five or six years, which includes assessments and climate forecasts. The latest one was published in 2015.

The latest research shows that the level of oceans will rise owing to the melting of glaciers and small islands will soon go under water. Among other consequences are a large number of extreme weather phenomena. Droughts, tornadoes, floods, and tsunamis are in store for us.

WILL UKRAINE BE ABLE TO SWITCH TO THE RENEWABLE SOURCES OF ENERGY?

The power-generation sector accounts for about 70 percent of carbon dioxide emissions. Nuclear and coal-fired power plants are the main pollutants of Ukraine. If this country gives them up, it will not only reduce its contribution to global pollution, but also gain energy independence.

“In fact, this is the only option for us, taking into account the events in the east,” Stavchuk says convincingly.

As of 2015, renewable sources accounted for a mere 4 percent of the gross final consumption of energy resources in Ukraine. This indicator was at a level of 20 percent in the world and almost the same in the European Union.

“When we were entertaining the idea of Ukraine switching to renewable sources, we were looked at as if we were mad,” Oksana Aliieva, coordinator of the Climate Change and Energy Policy program of the Heinrich Boell Foundation Ukraine, recalls. “So we seriously pondered almost two years ago on a research that would show whether Ukraine could switch to alternative power generation.”

The Heinrich Boell Foundation Ukraine requested the Ukrainian Institute of Economics and Forecasting to do the necessary calculations on the basis of the information of governmental organizations and the related associations, as well as all the available research materials in Ukraine on this matter.

“We can already see a steep drop in the cost of the technologies to gain solar energy. Forecasts show that the technologies of solar, wind, and geothermal energy will be dramatically falling in cost. At the same time, the cost of coal will be on the rise. All this will encourage the development of alternative power generation,” Aliieva comments.

Experts concluded after longtime research that Ukraine could give up fossil fuels before 2050 and bring the share of “green energy” to meet its energy needs up to 91 percent. The details of this report were made public in Bonn as part of the presentation of the study “Ukraine’s Transition to Renewable Power Generation before 2050.”

This transition will be made above all at the expense of solar, wind, and biomass energy. The scenario calls for investments worth 220 billion euros until 2050, which is almost twice the investments that will be made if there are no changes in the country’s energy sector. But, in reality, it is not so large an amount. For example, it will cost the state 7 billion euros to build a new nuclear power station, so this should not be done. Instead, a part of investments in renewable power generation can be made at the expense of fossil fuel purchase savings.

“There were different reactions to this scenario,” Aliieva says. “Of course, there are lobbyists of fossil-fuel and nuclear energy in Ukraine, who will in no way accept these results and will consider them inappropriate. But we know that our scenario is an instrument that will help encourage this country to raise their goals in the use of the renewable sources of energy.”