When Russian air strikes knocked out Ukrainian power plants earlier this winter, much of the Black Sea port city of Mykolaiv went dark, and indoor temperatures plummeted. Just 60 kilometers from the front, Tornado rockets, cruise and ballistic missiles, and attack drones have been raining down on the city of 450,000 for the last four years. Now, during the coldest winter in more than a decade, most of Mykolaiv’s citizens are once again enduring bitterly cold homes and, when electric water pumps fail, dry taps, showing the reasons behind Ukraine's turn to renewable energy.

But there are new glimmers of hope in Mykolaiv. Last November, 26 newly installed photovoltaic roof panels, paired with 100 kilowatt-hours of lithium battery storage, began to power heat pumps and generators to keep the city’s Urban Rehabilitation Center for Children and Persons with Disabilities up and running. Thanks to the Danish Refugee Council and Denmark’s foreign ministry, the project’s donors, the center continued operating even during a 32-hour stretch of shelling in mid-December, exemplifying Ukraine's turn to renewable energy. In addition to treating 70 patients a day, the center has opened its doors to at-risk Mykolaivians who lack heat. Several other institutions in Mykolaiv have also jettisoned their exclusive reliance on the national grid, which is mostly powered by large natural gas, coal-fired, and nuclear plants, and now draw energy from small-scale distributed systems that produce electricity at or near the point of use.

Grid operators are looking past the next drone swarm, pushing to diversify the country’s energy sources.

Since the war’s onset, Russia has targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure — its old-school fossil-fueled power plants, substations, and transmission lines — in an effort to advance its offensive and beat down the Ukrainian people. Before this winter even set in, half of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure lay in ruins, demonstrating the factors playing into Ukraine's turn to renewable energy. Economists estimate that total damage to the nation’s energy sector now exceeds $56 billion.

This winter is the most devastating yet, showing the reasons behind Ukraine's turn to renewable energy: Attacks have left giant swaths of the country with irregular electricity and heat as temperatures have plummeted to minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit. The bitter conditions have left many schools and other public services closed since Christmas. In Kyiv, as well as in Kharkiv, Poltava, and Dnipro, more than 1,000 public heating tents, powered by diesel generators and wood-burning stoves, offer residents warmth and a place to charge their phones. But these improvisations are too little. On January 14, President Volodymyr Zelensky declared a state of emergency in the energy sector.

Read the full article about Ukraine's turn to renewable energy by Paul Hockenos at Yale Environment 360.