Energy & Infrastructure
Exporting electricity to the European Union
A country that had electricity to sell westward was making a statement about its own system, and earning foreign currency while doing it.
Energy & Infrastructure
Gas, electricity, transit, nuclear generation, ports and the transport corridors that connect Ukraine to its markets.
Energy & Infrastructure
Synchronising with continental Europe
Connecting two power systems is not a matter of closing a switch. The engineering behind Ukraine joining the European grid is worth understanding properly, because it…
Energy & Infrastructure
The bridges: condition, replacement and the engineering backlog
A country has thousands of bridges and almost never thinks about them. They have design lives, and a large share of Ukraine's reached the end of…
Energy & Infrastructure
Road quality and the specification that changed it
Ukrainian roads improved noticeably in a short period. The reason is not more money; it is bitumen specification, laboratory control and warranty periods.
Energy & Infrastructure
Fixing the renewable support scheme
A generous feed-in tariff attracted the investment it was designed to attract, then ran out of money to pay it. The restructuring is a lesson in…
Energy & Infrastructure
Renewables before and after
Ukraine built a substantial renewable sector quickly using a generous support scheme, then discovered what happens when a support scheme is too generous.
Energy & Infrastructure
The nuclear fleet and the fuel switch
Ukraine generates a very large share of its electricity from nuclear power using Soviet-designed reactors. Changing who supplies the fuel for those reactors took fifteen years…
Energy & Infrastructure
Domestic gas production and the road to self-sufficiency
Ukraine produces most of the gas it uses and has spent two decades trying to close the remainder. The obstacle has been drilling capacity and licensing…
Energy & Infrastructure
The road building programme, from a supplier chair
A very large road programme ran for several years. Seen from the supply side, what mattered was contracting practice, payment terms and whether the tender was…
Energy & Infrastructure
The Black Sea ports and their capacity
Odesa, Chornomorsk and Pivdennyi are not interchangeable. Depth, berth length and hinterland connection decide what each can actually do.
Energy & Infrastructure
The coal regions and a managed transition
Closing a coal mine is an engineering task that takes two years and a social task that takes twenty. Confusing the two is how transitions fail.
Energy & Infrastructure
Unbundling Naftogaz
Separating the pipeline from the company that sells gas through it sounds like an accounting change. It is the single most important structural reform in the…
Comments