However, this year Russia announced it is going to set a new market price. First it was $95, then $130 and can eventually grow to $230. Ukrainian consumers knew that the low gas tariff was temporary but no one hurried to adapt to the new market rules and so are now complaining emotionally about the unexpected change, its unfairness and expedience. Now that we face the threefold price rise we understand that it will not only undermine the competitiveness of our economy but also jeopardize Ukraine's independence. We must think how to ensure the country's energy independence. It is not only a prerequisite for our further existence but also a way to bolster our national self-esteem and to resist the gas monopolist, which reprimands us for beggarly reliance on its energy and threatens with devilish pleasure to cut off gas supplies in winter.
As we all know, energy security is one of the three pillars of any modern society. Ukraine seems to have no problems with the other two. We produce enough food to satisfy our needs and even export some products, such as grain. There are also circumstances favorable to our external security; for no neighboring country openly declares that it wants to annex our territories. Besides its own armed forces, Ukraine also enjoys guarantees assumed by the nuclear states.
Our gas, however, comes from the Russian pipeline. The local reserves of oil and gas have been almost used up, mostly in Soviet times. We passed the peak of annual production (12 mln tons of oil and 60 bln cubic meters of natural gas) in the early 1970s and now produce only
4 mln tons of oil and 20-22 bln cubic meters of gas but annually need much more (16-20 mln tons and 70-75 bln cubic meters).
We have enough coal but it is difficult and expensive to extract. So Ukraine cannot do without Russian oil and especially Russian gas, whose shipments depend on our relations with the neighbor and sometimes sympathies and antipathies between the leaders of the two countries. These relations are often hit by instability and crises. The monopolistic owner of the gas occasionally tells Ukrainians what friends to have, what presidents and prime ministers to elect and who to call a hero and who a culprit.
Thus, energy security is the most important ingredient in Ukraine's development as an independent state and Ukrainians as a nation.
There are three possible solutions to the problem:
The first option is to find alternative routes by which to import oil and gas.
In other words, we need to find a new pipeline. Most of the world's hydrocarbons are produced in the Persian Gulf and the Caspian region. However, shipments of oil and gas from the Middle East are impeded by the lasting conflict between the United States and Iran. Ukraine can buy gas from Central Asia (Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan) but it is still delivered via the Russian pipeline.
The second way, which is really affordable, fairly profitable and proper for
a civilized nation, is to economically use energy, gas in particular. Ukrainians use 2.5 times more energy than people in developed countries. Gas was the major fuel for Soviet Ukraine's metallurgy and chemical industry, which are still the country's biggest consumers of energy, especially gas. This is why Russia's twofold price rise forced business people and the population to embark on a crusade to discover and use alternative energy: water, wind, sun, biological fuel, geothermal energy and others. Ukrainian businessmen want to use more coal and develop new technologies to minimize the impact of coal effluents.
Thus we will soon probably see privatizations of big coal mines and hear complaints from our left-wing parties, whose protests will not be merely ideological but voiced to react to the decreasing consumption of Russian gas. For Ukraine's left forces have been consistently supporting Russia's interests. Replacing Russian gas with local coal is not only obviously economical but is one of the ways to reinforce energy independence.
As far as energy efficiency, its manifestations can be seen in every Ukrainian town. We install special windows, increase the insulation of our homes and install water and gas meters. New joint stock companies focusing on energy efficiency and involving foreign partners appear daily.
Ukrainian scientists suggest various ideas to improve energy efficiency, so the proverbial ice has obviously begun to break.
The third way to achieve energy independence is by using alternative energy. Its sources are as old as our planet but their wider use is limited by natural disadvantages. This energy is scattered in time and space. The industrial age did much to use them widely but there are still many unresolved economic problems.
The Soviets used this energy before and after the Second World War. Small hydropower plants helped them overcome the post-war energy deficit. Later the people built thousands of bigger plants on the country's major rivers to provide even the remotest villages with energy. Soon these stations were closed, with only a few medium-sized plants and dams remaining.
The precipitous gas price increase triggered the revival of renewable energy. Rivers may one day dry up but the Ukrainian winds, especially in Crimea, the Azov region and the Carpathians, will never stop blowing.
Ukraine now has two hundred powerful wind collectors in the Azov region.
We are also gradually beginning to use the sun to produce heat and electricity.
Social and economic - not technical - factors impede the progress of renewable energy. We are capable of producing energy devices and machines but our oligarchic oil and gas barons resist all attempts to develop industries that can compete with the oil and gas branch. They do not care that a research center in Shcholkino to explore wind and helium energy was destroyed and want no green tariffs encouraging the use of renewable energy.
Scientists in Vinnytsya oblast delivered virtually the most painful blow against the oil and gas lobbyists in Ukraine. They designed a relatively cheap ($30,000) device to produce biological fuel from rapeseed. Our farmers can fully satisfy their energy needs using this fuel.
Foreign investors, particularly from Germany, offered to build more such machines. Nobody seemed to object but our notorious red tape slowed down the project. Well, bureaucrats may hamper progress but they cannot stop hundreds and thousands of businessmen that build, create and develop.
We still hope to defeat the oil tycoons. Farmers need only 10 percent of their land to plant rape and never again depend on these oil kings, who raise prices twice a year - when it is time to sow and gather crops. We can also plant rape in Chornobyl, renewing this territory and making it beneficial.
No lobbyists will be able to stop the construction of small factories to produce biological gas.
I wonder how supporters of Russian gas producers will react to the slump in their profits. They will probably invent some new arguments.
Achieving energy independence is not only a technical but also an economic and psychological problem, which has a political side. But citizens will soon understand that the less gas they consume, the more independent and richer they become.
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