The Scoop
Supporting Ukraine’s clean energy transition should be a key element of the incoming Trump administration’s geopolitical strategy against China and Russia, a top US energy diplomat told Semafor.
The remarks by Geoff Pyatt, the US assistant secretary of state for energy resources and a former ambassador to Ukraine, came shortly before Russia launched one of its largest air attacks since the Feb. 2022 invasion, killing at least nine people, inflicting severe damage to the country’s coal-fired power plants, and causing Kyiv to face its first blackouts of the winter season. At the COP29 summit in Baku, meanwhile, Ukrainian diplomats and business leaders were working to recruit greater foreign investment into the country’s energy sector and to convince other climate negotiators to embrace new guidelines to hold countries accountable for conflict-related carbon emissions.
Speaking on the sidelines of COP29, Pyatt said he plans to tell Trump’s transition team to strengthen US sanctions on Russia’s fossil fuel exporters. He added that US financial backing for renewables and advanced nuclear power projects in Ukraine was critical to undermining the power Russia wields through its oil and gas, and that Trump should leverage Ukraine’s manufacturing capacity and critical mineral resources to disentangle US clean energy and electric vehicle companies from supply chains in China.
“I can’t imagine why a Trump administration that is focused on America’s economic competitiveness and prosperity at home would want to walk away from the [clean energy] sector,” Pyatt said. “What I have to do in the weeks ahead is to brief the transition team on how to think about Ukraine and really emphasize the importance of looking at Ukraine not as some kind of charity case, but as an asset to Europe and the collective West.”
Tim’s view
The centerpiece of Ukraine’s pavilion at COP29 is a battered solar panel, destroyed in a missile attack on energy infrastructure near the southern city of Mykolaiv. Renewable energy systems are clearly still vulnerable to destruction. But they’re still much more secure than the country’s massive Soviet-era coal plants. The problem is paying for them. Although President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government is committed to a midcentury net zero target, progress toward it has been slowed by the war, which has scared off most foreign energy investors. Helping to underwrite Ukraine’s transition may be one of the cheapest and easiest ways for the Trump administration to continue supporting the country even as it threatens to withdraw military aid — with strategic and economic benefits for the US.
Some US companies are already making investments in Ukraine, including the nuclear technology provider Westinghouse and gas turbine manufacturer GE Vernova. But access to finance remains the biggest obstacle to rebuilding a greener energy system, said Jeff Oatham, chief sustainability officer at DTEK, Ukraine’s largest privately-owned energy company. At least until the war ends, greater public-sector finance from allied governments and development banks will be needed to derisk new investment, Oatham said.
Pyatt agreed, saying he would push Trump to solicit more congressional funding for the US International Development Finance Corporation to direct toward Ukraine’s energy sector. At COP29, the US announced a $30 million package for advanced nuclear power projects in Ukraine, and Pyatt said he is working with DTEK to find other ways for it to tap US funding. Ukraine’s energy crisis is also a business opportunity for US LNG exporters as Europe scrambles to cut its reliance on Russian gas, he said.
But the energy reconstruction task in Ukraine is so enormous that it can’t be accomplished just with international public finance, or with frozen Russian assets. More work is needed by the Zelenskyy administration to make its state-owned energy companies more transparent and to root out corruption, Pyatt said. The recent firing under questionable circumstances of the head of the country’s grid company was a step in the wrong direction. And some Ukrainian lawmakers are alarmed about the energy minister’s plan to build massive new nuclear power plants, warning that it could become a black box for corruption.
All told, Ukraine faces one of the world’s most challenging energy transitions. But it can also point the way forward for other countries. “If Ukraine can do it, anybody can,” Pyatt said. “Nobody has any excuses.”
Know More
Another priority for the Ukrainian delegation at COP29 is to promote an accounting standard for war-related emissions, said Viktoriia Kyreieva, a deputy minister of environment. A government-commissioned report presented at COP found emissions from the war’s first 24 months amount to about 175 million metric tons, more than the annual carbon footprint of the Philippines. Although they mostly occurred on Ukrainian territory, Ukraine believes these emissions should be counted against Russia’s carbon footprint, not its own. But that argument is not widely supported by other countries with large militaries, Kyreieva said.
The View From Capitol Hill
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) took a quick walkthrough of the Ukraine pavilion on Saturday, and used the time to admonish the delegates there not to count on US LNG exports. Given the role US LNG has played up to now in reducing Europe’s reliance on Russian LNG, the message wasn’t received well by some delegates there, who called his comments “provocative” after he left.
Notable
- Russia’s climate envoy said Trump shouldn’t withdraw from the Paris Agreement, a slightly head-scratching statement from a country that is usually one of the main blockers of progress at COP.