Renewable energy and security for Ukraine: Challenge or smart way?

Abstract

Nowadays, as most of the countries in the world pledged to the low-carbon future, global energy problems become more acute. One of the most promising ways to address the growing problems of energy supply widely considered by the international community is use of alternative energy source such as the renewable or „clean” energy. Renewable energy is highly praised for its wide availability and environmental friendliness and its decisive advantage over traditional energy is that it is not subjected to depletion like the fossil fuel resources and that it does not lead to the increasing pollution. The paper examines how renewable energy sources can be made useful in the case of Ukraine. Our analysis run along two dimensions: the EU and world’s global tendencies as well as the internal current situation. Our main focus is on whether the investing in renewable energy sources can be regarded as a country’s “smart” power policy and what the outcomes of turning to the renewable resources might be like over some time period in the future. On the base of statistical approach we came to the conclusions for Ukraine: 1) renewable energy sources (RES) production has a potential to replace oil, gas and coal sources, however the same could not be said about nuclear power; 2) the “green tariff” indeed makes renewable energy projects more attractive for investments; 3) RES production opens new projects in industry thus the employment rate in industry can grow, but not such could be said about agriculture; 4) in analyzed years RES production had very low level of impact on the economic performance; 5) RES have positive effect on the environment in Ukraine in analyzed period; 5) RES consumption has a potential to boost positive effects of alternative energy resources, more than even its production. That evokes the idea of necessity to implement policy and some actions to motivate namely private consumers and industry to increase the consumption of RES. Then it could obviously drive the increase of RES production.