Rouven Stubbe, energy economist and consultant at the Low Carbon Ukraine project participated in a hot seat panel discussion at yesterday’s IKI conference on “NDCs and Recovering Green: How to prepare and implement long-term Climate Policies in Times of War”. Making climate policy under high political and economic uncertainty as well as fiscal constraints is a complex task. Ukraine’s wartime NDC update will come with particular challenges: Mobilising finance and risk insurance, balancing short-term needs with long-term sustainable reconstruction, providing investors with regulatory certainty and moving forward with policy reforms and market liberalisation against the backdrop of wartime command and control. Nevertheless, there are also opportunities: Energy efficiency and domestic renewables can provide additional energy security benefits and a green reconstruction can be economically profitable with the right mix of policy reforms. Moreover, ambitious climate policy also provides Ukraine with leverage in the upcoming negotiations on Ukraine’s EU accession path.
Copyright images: IKI Initiative