Post-War Ukraine and the Renewables-Only Fantasy — With Germany as the Cautionary Tale

Ukraine’s power system has been gutted. Before the invasion, the country had roughly 39 GW of capacity; about 13 GW is reliably available today. A quarter of pre-war renewable capacity has been destroyed or seized. Missile and drone attacks on transmission have forced the country from exporter to rolling blackouts and emergency imports. These are not abstractions; they are the operational constraints of a grid under fire.

Against this backdrop, the idea that Ukraine should rebuild on wind and solar alone is not merely impractical; it is a category error. Weather-dependent sources do not provide firm capacity without massive overbuild and long-duration storage that does not yet exist at the needed scale. To supply a dependable 1 GW around the clock from wind or solar, you require several gigawatts of nameplate plus storage to span winter lulls and windless nights—exactly when heating and defense-critical loads peak. Even if the capital were available, the build-out time guarantees prolonged vulnerability.

This is why the country’s own long-term planning does not promise a 100% renewables system. By mid-century, the strategy envisions roughly half the electricity from renewables, not all of it—because the other half must be firm and dispatchable—and clean. The near-term priority is obvious: keep people warm and factories running with a portfolio that includes modernized nuclear, strategic renewables, hydro where it makes sense, and, if necessary, transitional thermal capacity while you harden the grid and spool up storage. The point is independence and resilience, not ideological compliance.

If you doubt the risk of ideology, look at Europe’s recent experience. Countries that retired nuclear and bet the system on weather plus imports learned the hard way that intermittency multiplied by geopolitics is not a plan. Ukraine cannot afford that lesson twice. Nor should donors or international partners bake ideological conditions into assistance that would trap Kyiv in dependence on neighbors whenever the wind stalls or a substation goes down.

Anti-nuclear campaigns—domestic and foreign—compound the risk. Inside Ukraine, there are voices insisting the country should renounce nuclear on principle. That demand, in a nation with deep nuclear expertise and a history of high-capacity, low-emissions generation, amounts to a veto on its fastest path back to reliable power. Outside Ukraine, Western purism exerts pressure of a different kind: “help” that comes pre-packaged with a renewables-only morality test. Dressing that up as solidarity does not make it less dangerous. It asks Ukrainians who are already paying in blood to also pay in blackouts.

None of this diminishes the importance of renewables in Ukraine’s reconstruction. On the contrary, they should be built—aggressively—where they add resilience: distributed generation to blunt missile impacts, utility-scale projects where grid topology supports them, and storage that actually closes reliability gaps rather than gesturing at them. But the adult position is integration, not substitution. Pretending weather-based generation can replace firm capacity one-for-one is a policy metaphysics that leaves people cold.

The country’s investment signals reflect this pragmatism. Proposals for a “Green Marshall Plan” (Ukraine’s term) aim to mobilize tens of billions for low-emissions industrial capacity and clean energy projects—including wind and solar—but they also acknowledge that nuclear and hydro remain pillars of decarbonization. In other words: this is a diversified rebuild, not a purity contest. The fastest way to sovereignty is power you can count on.

There is also a moral argument that cuts against anti-nuclear dogma. Wartime and post-war electricity is not a lifestyle accessory; it is survival infrastructure. Hospitals, air defenses, water systems, rail logistics—all require stable frequency and dependable megawatts. When activists in comfortable capitals demand that Ukraine “do more with less,” they are really demanding more risk, more scarcity, and more import reliance for other people. The rhetoric of “just transitions” becomes cruel when it refuses the one tool—nuclear—that historically delivered high-volume, low-emissions electricity with minimal land and materials footprint.

And then there is the transatlantic political distortion field. From one flank, renewables-only purism that treats baseload as sin. From the other, a Trumpist indulgence of Putin that has already cost Ukraine dearly—aid held hostage, aggression excused as “savvy,” territorial “land-swap” fantasies floated as if this were a real-estate seminar. The first erases physics; the second erases sovereignty. Ukrainians end up paying for both.

A serious reconstruction program starts from first principles. (1) Hard-seal what still works: defend and modernize existing nuclear units, and prepare life-extension and uprate paths where feasible. (2) Build what you can deploy quickly: distributed renewables that keep critical services afloat when nodes are hit, paired with storage matched to actual duration needs. (3) Fortify the network: redundancy, sectionalization, and mobile generation to survive strikes; interconnection sized for insurance, not dependence. (4) Sequence for speed and learning: early capacity that buys time for deeper decarbonization investments to arrive, including future advanced reactors if they clear safety and economics gates. The through-line is simple—reliability first, then elegance.

The litmus test for any energy idea in Ukraine now should be painfully clear: does it keep the heat on this winter and every winter after that while cutting emissions over time? If the answer requires hand-waving about unprecedented storage deployments, heroic curtailment, or permanent imports from neighbors who may be coping with their own shortfalls, it is not a plan. It is a sermon.

Ukraine has earned the right to rebuild on terms that respect engineering reality and human need. The fastest route to energy independence runs through atoms and honesty: nuclear for stability and scale; weather-based sources where they strengthen—not weaken—the system; and a grid that is built to take a punch. Anything else replaces one form of vulnerability with another.

Ukraine’s own long-term planning implicitly recognizes this. The mid-century strategy targets roughly half of electricity from renewables, not 100%, because the rest must be firm and dispatchable. That is what rapid independence and resilience require.

Germany: What an Ideology-First Exit Actually Cost

Germany offers a concrete, recent example of how pre-committing to a nuclear exit amplifies vulnerability when geopolitics turns hostile. On April 15, 2023, Berlin shut its last three reactors (Isar 2, Emsland, Neckarwestheim 2), completing a decades-long phase-out that briefly paused only because of the war. Reuters

When Russia throttled gas exports, Germany scrambled: it legally prepared coal plant reactivations to keep the lights on and hold gas for heat and industry; it also extended the nuclear units only until April 2023. Clean Energy WireReuters  Before the war, ~55% of German gas imports came from Russia—an exposure that turned an ideology-driven nuclear exit into an acute security and price shock once the Kremlin weaponized supply. Clean Energy WireWorld Economic Forum

The fiscal bill was enormous: in September–October 2022, the government created a €200 billion “defensive shield” (gas/electricity price brakes, tax changes) to buffer households and industry from surging energy prices. That was not a triumph of energy planning; it was an emergency transfer to survive the consequences of constrained firm supply. Reuters+2Reuters+2

And on the power balance, the outcome was stark. In 2023 Germany became a net electricity importer for the first time in roughly two decades, with a net import surplus of ~11.7 TWh—after closing its last nuclear plants and amid volatile thermal generation. Imports helped, but they were a symptom of fragility, not a plan. agora-energiewende.orgFraunhofer ISE

None of this says wind and solar should not expand—they did, and they should. It says that pre-excluding nuclear left Germany buying insurance at crisis prices, burning more coal when gas was scarce, and relying on neighbors to stabilize supply during a geopolitical shock. Ukraine cannot afford that sequence—financially, militarily, or morally.

What That Means for Ukraine

1. Defend and modernize what still works. Protect existing nuclear units, accelerate safety upgrades, and prepare life-extension/uprates where sound. Nuclear is the only proven, high-capacity, low-emission source that is both compact and dispatchable at scale in Ukraine’s context.

2. Build weather-dependent generation where it adds resilience. Wind and solar should grow aggressively where grid topology and critical-infrastructure siting make them antifragile (e.g., distributed assets that blunt the impact of strikes), paired with storage sized to real duration needs—not wishful thinking.

3. Harden the network. Redundancy, sectionalization, mobile generation, and targeted interconnections should be sized for insurance, not dependence. Imports can be a relief valve; they cannot be the backbone of sovereignty during a war.

4. Sequence for speed and survivability. Early, fast-to-deploy capacity (including modernized thermal where unavoidable) buys the time to bring on longer-lead low-emission assets. The litmus test is simple: does this keep heat and industry running this winter and every winter after, while emissions fall over time?

This is also why donors and partners should not smuggle technology bans into aid. “Renewables-only” conditionality would replicate Germany’s vulnerability without Germany’s fiscal cushion. If Ukraine is forced to import whenever weather under-delivers—or to burn more coal when gas is scarce—that is not independence; it is engineered fragility.

The Politics of Anti-Nuclear Pressure

Inside and outside Ukraine, anti-nuclear activism insists that a nation with deep nuclear expertise should renounce the one tool that can provide large-scale, low-emission, round-the-clock power through wartime and recovery. In practice, that demand functions as a veto on the fastest route to reliability. It asks people already paying in blood to also pay in blackouts. The rhetoric may be moralized; the effects are not.

A Realistic Reconstruction Ethic

Ukraine’s recovery will use every practical tool: grid hardening; firm, low-emission domestic generation; rapid deployment of wind and solar where they strengthen the system; and storage that actually closes the reliability gap. Even Ukraine’s investment signals point this way: proposals for a “Green Marshall Plan” (their label) seek tens of billions for low-emission industrial capacity and new power projects—including wind and solar—while explicitly keeping nuclear and hydro in the decarbonization mix. That is prudence, not backsliding.

The stakes are painfully concrete. Hospitals, air defense, water systems, rail logistics—none of this runs on rhetoric. The fastest route to sovereignty is power you can count on. For Ukraine, that means atoms for stability and scale, weather-dependent generation where it adds resilience rather than subtracts it, and a grid that is built to take a punch. Anything else replaces one form of vulnerability with another.