Semafor’s Tim McDonnell on Covering Russia’s Energy War From Kyiv

Ukraine has learned how to keep a power grid running while someone is trying to destroy it. Every country that imports oil now needs the same lessons.

Last winter Russia blew up power plants and substations, and Kyiv lost power every day. The fixes were concrete bunkers that let a substation take a direct hit, home batteries, a nuclear fleet kept running, and new wind and solar built in the middle of a war.

The Iran war has since shown every oil importer the same vulnerability. Countries won’t go back to sleep after this, and the map of who buys energy from whom is being redrawn.

Tim McDonnell is Semafor’s climate and energy editor and writes Semafor Energy, its twice-weekly newsletter. He lives in Kyiv, where the sirens go off all the time and some nights are spent in the metro. Getting out to report starts with an overnight train to Poland, because Ukraine still has no working airport.

The interview was recorded at Climate Week NYC on September 21. The intro and outro were recorded before the energy ceasefire Trump announced on October 11.

In this episode:

• The sirens, the metro at night, and why the air war over Kyiv is back to early-2022 levels
• How a substation wrapped in concrete takes a cruise missile and keeps working
• Why the free flow of oil through Hormuz that existed before February is probably gone for good
• The case that oil importers won’t “go back to sleep” once the Iran war ends
• Egypt’s six-month sprint into wind and solar after Iran sent gas prices up
• The “tourists” arriving in cleantech funding rounds, and whether that’s a bubble

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