Horrors in Ukraine highlight another reason to ditch fossil fuels
Our hearts are with all those affected by the invasion of Ukraine. Every week we close our team huddle with a “Why” leader and this week we focused on the devastating events in Europe. The human toll is top of mind for all of us but for the purpose of this newsletter we are going to stay in our lane and focus on how this conflict relates to climate and sustainability.
One of the key issues brought to bear is the heavy reliance on Russian oil and gas exports. While the world imposes some of the toughest-ever sanctions on Russia including exclusion from the SWIFT banking system, there is one key, ubiquitous exclusion — energy. The Russian invasion in Ukraine is in part funded by revenues realized from the Russian export of oil and gas to European nations. This highlights that transitioning to a decentralized, multi-source, renewable energy system is not only a matter of global sustainability but also geo-political stability. The faster the transition can occur, the sooner we can all benefit from those outcomes.
This graph illustrates the large scope of the dependency.
