The battle for Eastern Europe’s energy sector

The fight to power eastern Europe is heating up. As Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky prepares to meet Joe Biden at the White House, competition for Ukraine’s energy market is increasingly being framed as a battle between East and West. And as western investments into renewables vie with fossil fuel imports from Russia, the struggle for the nation’s energy supply is assuming a moral dimension reminiscent of the Cold War.

Tens of thousands of panels at Ukraine’s huge Nikopol solar farm harvest the sun’s energy for nobody. In late 2019, the Canadian owners of the farm, TIU Canada, were informed that the nearby Nikopol Ferroalloy Plant, owned by the notorious Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, would be disconnecting their farm from the power grid to make repairs. They were not aware that any such repairs were needed. Despite frantic protests the connection was severed – and a year and a half later, it has still not been restored.