98 - Putin Wreaking Havoc in Ukraine, and Beyond: Energy Crises
Even before Putin mobilized 300,000 reservists yesterday, his forces assaulted Ukraine’s electrical generating plants, attempted to cripple two nuclear power stations, knocked out water filtration systems, and destroyed a dam. These attacks came from afar, mostly originating within Russia and using cruise missiles and other long-range instruments of war. Finally, Putin also shut down the Nordstream-1 gas pipeline to Germany, putting European industry and millions of householders at risk of running out of fuel if the inward shipment of natural gas by specialized tankers coming from Algeria, Nigeria, Qatar, and the United States fails to meet demand. Europeans may be forced to endure a very cold winter, its manufacturers also suffering.
Putin has been backed into a corner by Ukraine’s recent surges on the battlefield. His response has been to lash out at Ukraine’s vital civilian infrastructure, holding hostage the defending nation’s core energy underpinnings. Bombing one nuclear power installation and using another as a defensive redoubt from which to loft shells at Ukrainian troops — obviously jeopardizing the safety of the giant Zaporizhzia plant in the process — is certainly par for Putin’s course. The two nuclear facilities together comprise about 30 percent of Ukraine’s electrical generating capacity.
In addition to the massive destruction that Putin’s guns and missiles have wreaked overall on Ukraine, with many thousands killed, millions of people displaced, and billions of dollars worth of infrastructure reduced to rubble, that foolish war has also spread havoc far beyond Europe. Ships still seem to be leaving Ukraine’s ports with wheat and barley, and traversing the Bosphorus on their way to European, Middle Eastern, and African destinations. But only a few of the 22 million metric tons of grain in or near Odesa has so far made it to those unfortunate citizens in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, and Tanzania who are starving because of monsoon rain failures going back many years. Somalia, for example, endured a major drought and consequential cascading crop and livestock failures in 2011, when 260,000 people died. This year’s rain shortfall is almost certain to lead to further hardship throughout the Horn of Africa, with many millions at risk.
The Ukrainian war also paused grain shipments for months, cutting Somalia and the rest of Africa off from their usual supplies from Ukraine and Russia. Shortages caused by the war have also escalated prices everywhere. Africans will starve because of Putin’s ambitions and vanity.
The International Energy Agency estimates that the invasion of Ukraine, coming on top of the dislocations caused by the coronavirus pandemic, has left 25 million more African without electricity than before. This developmental obstacle is a product of neglect, political policies that starved electrical generating companies of investment, shortages of skilled personnel, and elevated expenses that are a by-product of Putin’s war. “The world is in the midst of the first truly global energy crisis, triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the electricity sector is one of the most heavily affected,” says a senior Agency official.
Before the war, Africa’s electrical generating capacity was growing, thanks to the completion of Ethiopia’s controversial Grand Renaissance dam. But, overall, Africa per capita has the least available electricity of any continent. Even the largest and most advanced African countries have paltry supplies of power — never enough to satisfy the requirements of manufacturing, mining, urban street lighting and water pumping needs, and households seeking light and heat. South Africa and Zimbabwe, even Nigeria, and many smaller countries periodically run out of available power. Citizens seeking to study, to cook on a stove, or to do laundry find their electricity cut off. South Africa, hindered by maintenance failures and corruption within its crippled state-owned monopoly power supplier, frequently (often daily or hourly) practice “load-shedding.” Whole cities and huge mining and industrial facilities are simply deprived of power for days at a time.
In the rural areas of Africa, rarely connected to power grids at all, villagers are forced to rely for light at night on expensive kerosene lanterns or wood-burning fires. In some areas small solar-powered implements are available — sufficient to re-charge mobile telephones or to light a small bulb. But most of Africa is far behind the rest of the world in gaining access to renewable sources of power, either solar- or wind-generated.
Despite abundant sunshine in most of Africa, solar generating power arrays are only now becoming available in a few locales. Even where they exist, as well, there are shortages of transmission lines. Even electricity produced by the might Grand Renaissance hydro facility, with outputs similar to the Three Gorges dam in China, is hard to distribute because of the absence of transmission lines from Ethiopia north to Egypt or south to places desperate for electricity, like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, or Zimbabwe.
Spain, with 46 million inhabitants, itself generates sufficient electricity from hydro and other sources to power all of Africa south of the Sahara — about 1 billion consumers. On its own, the power available to customers in eastern Massachusetts is sufficient to supply the current needs of Nigeria, Africa’s most populated nation, with at least 210 million people. South Africa’s current electrical generating capacity (not always available) is about 5000 MW (megawatts). Alaska and Delaware each have larger capacities available to their citizens. To provide a few more sobering statistics, on a per person basis, sub-Saharan Africans receive less than a third of the power resources available to Southeast Asians and a mere tenth of that consumed by South Americans.
Life is nasty, brutish, and short (as Thomas Hobbes wrote) in much of the world. Putin’s war has made it far worse for billions of people worldwide. If he tries — as President Biden warned against — to unleash nuclear weapons, the rest of the globe will suffer indirectly while Ukrainians suffer directly and immediately. Even if some African nations have not yet taken sides (and it is past time that they did) Putin’s war will continue to inflict collateral damage on people as far away as Chad or Zambia. It is time for Putin to go.