This analysis was conducted on the basis of Ukraine’s 2021 updated nationally determined contribution and before the brutal and unwarranted Russian military invasion in the country.
We are publishing it to show that the Ukrainian government had plans in place to facilitate a transition to a low carbon economy.
Once peace is restored, in addition to very large reconstruction and humanitarian needs, Ukraine will need international support to build a climate-resilient society and economy in line with the Paris Agreement.
Ukraine’s building stock is relatively energy inefficient, ranging from 250-450 kWh/m2.14 Recent efforts to improve on this have centred on funds and loans to implement upgrades to residential buildings, but the scale of funding is not yet sufficient to achieve the wholesale changes necessary.
Several priority areas have been identified by the Ukrainian government, namely: modernisation of the building stock, replacement of inefficient boilers and other fossil fuel heating systems, and a nationwide building reconstruction effort.15 To ensure Ukraine is aligned with the illustrative 1.5°C pathways, direct building emissions should decline to around one fifth of their 1990 levels by 2030, and reach zero between 2040 and 2050.
1 Government of Ukraine. 2020 Common Reporting Format (CRF) Table. (2020).
22 While global cost-effective pathways assessed by the IPCC Special Report 1.5°C provide useful guidance for an upper-limit of emissions trajectories for developed countries, they underestimate the feasible space for such countries to reach net zero earlier. The current generation of models tend to depend strongly on land-use sinks outside of currently developed countries and include fossil fuel use well beyond the time at which these could be phased out, compared to what is understood from bottom-up approaches. The scientific teams which provide these global pathways constantly improve the technologies represented in their models – and novel CDR technologies are now being included in new studies focused on deep mitigation scenarios meeting the Paris Agreement. A wide assessment database of these new scenarios is not yet available; thus, we rely on available scenarios which focus particularly on BECCS as a net-negative emission technology. Accordingly, we do not yet consider land-sector emissions (LULUCF) and other CDR approaches which developed countries will need to implement in order to counterbalance their remaining emissions and reach net zero GHG are not considered here due to data availability.