In Ukraine, distributed renewables foil Russia’s assaults

在乌克兰，分布式可再生能源挫败了俄罗斯的袭击

When Russian air strikes knocked out Ukrainian power plants across the country earlier this year, most of the Black Sea port city of Mykolaiv in southeastern Ukraine was unable to pump fresh water to the city’s housing blocs. But in an easterly suburb of Mykolaiv, drinking water flowed from kitchen taps, as it has since last year thanks to a small off-grid solar field tucked inconspicuously into its midst. Paul Hockenos reports.

今年早些时候，当俄罗斯的空袭摧毁了乌克兰全国各地的发电厂时，位于乌克兰东南部黑海港口城市尼古拉耶夫（Mykolaiv）的大部分地区都无法向居民区输送淡水。但在尼古拉耶夫的一个东部郊区，厨房水龙头里却流出了饮用水。得益于去年安装在郊区中一个不起眼的小型离网太阳能电站，这种情况一直持续至今。保罗·霍克诺斯（Paul Hockenos）报道。

The two sets of elevated arrays and battery, funded by the Danish government, run the underground pump on its premises. ‘There’s just enough sun [in January/this winter thus far] to make it work,’ says Olena Kondratiuk, project manager of Ecoclub, a non-profit that assists municipalities in obtaining renewables.

这两组由丹麦政府资助的架高太阳能电池板和蓄电池，为该区域的地下水泵提供动力。“（今年一月/这个冬天以来）阳光刚好足够让它运转，”非营利组织“生态俱乐部”（Ecoclub）的项目经理奥莱娜·孔德拉丘克（Olena Kondratiuk）说，该组织旨在协助各城市获取可再生能源。

The city of Mykolaiv, only 60 kilometres from Russian-occupied territory, had been battered in 2022 when the Russian army launched its full invasion of Ukraine, pummelling the city with missiles, rockets and cluster bombs. The shelling laid waste to homes, hospitals, schools and factories. The bombardment also impaired the central water supply system, leaving most of the roughly half-a-million-strong town near the frontline without regularly flowing water.

尼古拉耶夫市距离俄罗斯占领区仅60公里。2022年俄罗斯军队对乌克兰发动全面入侵时，该市遭到了猛烈打击，导弹、火箭弹和集束炸弹不断轰炸这座城市。炮击摧毁了住宅、医院、学校和工厂。轰炸还破坏了中央供水系统，导致这座拥有约50万人口的前线城市大部分地区无法正常供水。

‘Of course I’m happy to have running water again, I don’t care how,’ an older resident named Iryna told me. Until the solar park commenced operation, her taps discharged salty water, accessed from a nearby estuary, when anything dripped from them at all. She either purchased drinking water or filled plastic jugs with fresh water from mobile public tanks, and asked neighbours to carry them up to her fifth-floor apartment.

“我当然很高兴能再次用上自来水，我不在乎它是怎么来的，”一位名叫伊琳娜（Iryna）的老年居民告诉我。在太阳能电站投入使用之前，她的水龙头里流出的都是从附近河口抽取的咸水，而且经常断水。她要么花钱买饮用水，要么从移动公共水箱里接淡水，然后请邻居帮忙把水提到她位于五楼的公寓。

Other districts of Mykolaiv – the city is a country-wide pioneer in renewables – also receive fresh water on account of distributed solar technology. Five solar-powered desalination systems turn saline or polluted water into drinking water – when the sun shines. At night and on cloudy days, they are powered by the central grid – that is, if it’s up and running. The system, one of the largest of its kind in Europe, can supply 250,000 residents with 1.2 million litres of drinking water a day.

尼古拉耶夫市是乌克兰可再生能源领域的先驱，该市的其他地区也因分布式太阳能技术而获得了淡水。五套太阳能海水淡化系统在阳光充足时，能将咸水或受污染的水转化为饮用水。在夜晚和阴天，它们则由中央电网供电——前提是电网仍在运行。该系统是欧洲同类系统中规模最大的之一，每天可为25万居民提供120万升饮用水。

The Mykolaiv children’s hospital and the maternity hospital will steady their energy supply with solar panels in the course of this year, as are a dozen others elsewhere in the country. Since the war’s onset, Russia has relentlessly targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure – for the most part, overwhelmingly bulky, old-school thermal plants and the vast country-wide grid – in an effort to lame the war effort and beat down its people.

尼古拉耶夫儿童医院和妇产医院将在今年内通过安装太阳能电池板来稳定能源供应，全国其他地区的十几家医院也将采取同样的措施。自战争爆发以来，俄罗斯不断针对乌克兰的能源基础设施进行打击——主要是那些庞大且老旧的火力发电厂以及覆盖全国的庞大电网——试图以此削弱乌克兰的战争能力并摧毁民众的意志。

Last winter was the gravest yet: attacks against coal, gas, cogeneration and hydropower plants, as well as transmission grids and their substations, left giant swaths of the country with irregular electricity and heat as temperatures have plummeted to minus 20 degrees centigrade. Many schools and other public services that were unable to reopen after Christmas are still closed today. Economists estimate that total damage to Ukraine’s energy sector now exceeds $56 billion.

去年冬天是最严峻的时期：针对煤炭、天然气、热电联产和水力发电厂，以及输电网及其变电站的袭击，导致乌克兰大片地区在气温骤降至零下20摄氏度时，电力和供暖供应极不稳定。许多在圣诞节后无法重新开放的学校和其他公共服务机构至今仍处于关闭状态。经济学家估计，乌克兰能源部门遭受的总损失现已超过560亿美元。

US environmentalist Bill McKibben argues that Ukraine’s autonomous power sources are ‘comparatively invulnerable to attack’. In our new era of drone warfare, writes McKibben, centralized and complex energy facilities are now ‘sitting ducks for drone attack’. Smaller, ‘scattered’ generation sources with batteries and independent transmission grids, like the Mykolaiv fields, are not only harder for Russia to strafe, but they’re much more quickly repaired, too.

美国环保人士比尔·麦基本（Bill McKibben）认为，乌克兰的自主能源“相对不容易受到攻击”。麦基本写道，在我们这个无人机战争的新时代，集中式且复杂的能源设施现在成了“无人机攻击的活靶子”。像尼古拉耶夫电站这样带有蓄电池和独立输电网的、规模较小且“分散”的发电设施，不仅更难被俄罗斯扫射，而且修复速度也快得多。

This is in contrast to petrochemical refineries, which McKibben calls ‘one of the most complicated machines humanity has ever constructed’, and often cover hundreds of acres. These are ‘filled with highly complex equipment and highly flammable hydrocarbons; hit one corner with a drone and the flames and the damage are likely to spread quickly’.

这与石油化工炼油厂形成了鲜明对比。麦基本称炼油厂是“人类建造的最复杂的机器之一”，通常占地数百英亩。这些设施“充满了高度复杂的设备和高度易燃的碳氢化合物；用无人机击中一个角落，火势和破坏很可能会迅速蔓延”。

‘A coal power station [is] a large single target that a single missile could take out,’ says Jeff Oatham of DTEK, Ukraine’s largest energy investor. ‘You would need around 40 missiles to do the equivalent amount of capacity damage at a wind farm.’ And, like wind parks, a solar field functions even when part of it is out of operation.

乌克兰最大的能源投资商DTEK的杰夫·奥瑟姆（Jeff Oatham）表示：“一座燃煤电厂是一个巨大的单一目标，一枚导弹就能将其摧毁。而要对一个风电场造成同等规模的产能破坏，则需要大约40枚导弹。”此外，与风电场一样，太阳能电站即使在部分设施停止运作时，依然能够发挥作用。

Ukraine is revamping its energy system at warp speed for the purpose of energy security, not climate protection. ‘Ukraine’s energy transition is not a slogan,’ says Levgeniia Kopytsia, a Ukrainian energy analyst at the think tank Institute for Climate Protection, Energy and Mobility. ‘It’s a security-driven transformation, unfolding under extreme constraints. It priorities decentralization, flexibility, and speed of recovery.’

乌克兰正以极快的速度改造其能源系统，其目的是为了能源安全，而非气候保护。智库“气候保护、能源与交通研究所”（Institute for Climate Protection, Energy and Mobility）的乌克兰能源分析师列夫根尼娅·科皮察（Levgeniia Kopytsia）表示：“乌克兰的能源转型不是一句口号。这是一场由安全驱动的变革，在极端限制下展开。它优先考虑去中心化、灵活性和恢复速度。”

In wartime Ukraine, renewables and local grids are coldly calculated security assets, Kopytsia says, that can boost the system’s resilience – and in Ukraine this translates into saving lives. Ukraine’s shift away from fossil fuels began before the full-scale invasion: its negotiations to join the EU require it to adapt to the bloc’s climate criteria, and in 2021, Ukraine pledged to be coal free by 2035.

科皮察说，在战时的乌克兰，可再生能源和地方电网是经过冷峻计算的安全资产，它们可以增强系统的韧性——在乌克兰，这意味着拯救生命。乌克兰摆脱化石燃料的转变在全面入侵之前就已经开始：其加入欧盟的谈判要求其适应欧盟的气候标准，2021年，乌克兰承诺到2035年实现无煤化。

For security reasons, there are currently no public figures available for energy production. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), this past summer, Ukraine made ‘strong strides’ in rebuilding and bolstering its system’s resilience. The renewables rollout was – and still is – led by rooftop solar, small-scale utility PV generation and local storage, as well as biomass combustion.

出于安全原因，目前没有关于能源生产的公开数据。根据国际能源署（IEA）的数据，去年夏天，乌克兰在重建和加强系统韧性方面取得了“重大进展”。可再生能源的推广——过去和现在——主要由屋顶太阳能、小型公用事业光伏发电、本地储能以及生物质燃烧所引领。

Before Russia seized three of them in 2022, there were 34 wind parks in Ukraine with around 700 turbines – and more in the works. Ukraine has seven gigawatts of wind power in the pipeline, ready to go this year, should conditions be fortuitous. This would more than triple the country’s current capacity, which in 2022 constituted over 20 per cent of its renewable mix. The relentless waves of aerial attacks on infrastructure prompted an epiphany in Ukraine’s energy sector: a new, younger set of energy managers – that replaced the Soviet-style old guard – are fully commit

在2022年俄罗斯占领其中三个风电场之前，乌克兰共有34个风电场，拥有约700台风力涡轮机，还有更多项目正在筹备中。如果条件允许，乌克兰今年有7吉瓦的风电项目准备投入使用。这将使该国目前的产能增加两倍以上，2022年风电占其可再生能源结构的20%以上。针对基础设施的持续空袭促使乌克兰能源部门产生了一种顿悟：一批取代了苏联式旧体制的新一代年轻能源管理者，正全力投入……