Another ClimateTech Podcast
Another ClimateTech Podcast is a weekly interview series that explores the fight against climate change through the lens of entrepreneurship, investment, academia, activism, and art. Join Ryan Grant Little, a seasoned climatetech founder, advisor, and investor, as he interviews the climate warriors trying to save us from ourselves.
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Another ClimateTech Podcast
The war in Ukraine and what it means for energy and the environment, with Juraj Krivošík of SEVEn
This is a topic I’ve wanted to talk about on the podcast for the whole last year. 🌟 Juraj Krivošík is the Executive Director at SEVEn, The Energy Efficiency Center, in Prague. He’s also in my opinion one of the leading voices on how energy and infrastructure have been affected by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and its broader implications today and in the future.
In this episode, we talked about:
🇺🇦 The impact of the Ukraine war on CO2 emissions and biodiversity loss
🏢 The role of energy security in shaping climate policies in Europe
🪖 The importance of supporting Ukraine to ensure global climate protection
⚡ The unintended push towards renewable energy due to rising energy prices
🔋 The challenges of measuring and promoting energy efficiency compared to new energy sources
#climatetech #energysecurity #renewableenergy #ukraine
Welcome to another Climate Tech podcast interviews with the people trying to save us from ourselves. Jure Kravosic runs SEVEN the energy accelerator and is a leading expert on how energy efficiency will help fuel the transition to a low-carbon economy. He's also a major activist on the war in Ukraine and, like me, feels that the climate tech community isn't doing enough to connect the dots on why our efforts are in vain if we don't help secure a decisive military victory for Ukraine. We talked about this and the environmental impacts of the war. I reached Jure in Prague. I'm Ryan Grant Little. Thanks for being here, jure. Welcome to the podcast, thank you. Good morning everyone. You're the executive director of Prague-based Seven the energy efficiency accelerator and you've been working there for now 24 years. What does Seven do?
Juraj Krivošík:Yes, indeed, seven is an energy efficiency center based in Prague, in the Czech Republic. It's an independent, not-for-profit consultancy which is advising its customers clients on, obviously, energy efficiency projects. We do a mixture of projects focusing on technical improvements to save energy in buildings and technologies around the Czech Republic, around Central and Eastern Europe, but also in other European countries and sometimes even outside Europe, and we also do projects which are related to the development of legislation, public awareness, improvement of understanding and knowledge of professionals and households on how to save energy so that they save money and protect the environment, and energy efficiency, of course, is a very key topic for climate tech.
Ryan Grant Little:One of the reasons, though, that you and I have connected is actually because of your work in Ukraine, where you're a fellow supporter, and I wonder if you could talk a bit about your connection with the country and how you got so involved. Your LinkedIn profile is largely posts about what's happening in Ukraine from an energy perspective.
Juraj Krivošík:Yes, indeed, and there are actually several reasons for this. One of the key reasons could be that this is a, so to say, black and white conflict. It's actually not even a conflict because there could be something a dispute between two parties, but this is clearly, let's say, a barbaric, illegal invasion of Russia into Ukraine. There are many conflicts around the world where you actually feel that this might be a problem between the two sides, but here it's actually a problem of one country, which is a large country, invading the smaller neighbor.
Juraj Krivošík:So I would say one issue is that basically it's a moral duty to try to help the smaller neighbor against the invasion of the large country to defend itself, because if Ukraine loses and Russia wins the war, then they will not stop there, they will definitely move ahead into the other countries in the region and it will also give more strength to Russia and similar countries to try to attack other smaller neighbors. So it's an economic interest as well and, as you say, there is an energy angle to this as well, because how we spend on energy is actually also influencing how much money Russia earns and is able to fund their war machine against Ukraine and fake news machine against Europe, against the Northern American and other democracies around the world.
Ryan Grant Little:I want to get into the energy aspect of this a little bit because it's really important, but I think it gets technical. It's not, you know, understanding energy as a weapon. Weaponized energy is not something that kind of is intuitive, I think, for a lot of people. So I'm curious to get your view on that. I came back from Kiev just a few days ago and now they're operating with planned rolling power cuts across the city. It's much worse in other places, where you know the electricity is out for 20 hours a day, it's not that bad. Yet in Kyiv it's my first time experiencing that there in my trips there and I think that it's probably a knock-on effect from the destruction of the Trapilia thermal power plant in April. And I wonder if you could just talk a bit about what the power grid in Ukraine looks like right now, maybe before and after, so before the full-scale invasion, and what the risks are ahead of time, or the risks are now looking ahead, especially to the winter.
Juraj Krivošík:Well, you said the word is weaponizing energy against Ukraine, against Europe as well. I would actually maybe start that when the full-scale invasion started on the 24th of February 2022, russia and Putin they were hoping that, actually, europe would freeze in the dark in that winter, and because we were so dependent on Russian energies, russian fuels that they thought that it's inevitable that we would need their energies. We would have to continue buying their fuels and therefore also continue paying them for these exports. And this is what they are actually now doing in Ukraine as well, by cutting people's homes, households from the energy grid, destroying the power plants, destroying energy facilities so that people would be freezing in the dark. Households from the energy grid, destroying the power plants, destroying energy facilities so that people would be freezing in the dark. And you actually can indeed see this is not so much about the energy infrastructure. This is more about economics and mainly about politics, where they are actually trying to.
Juraj Krivošík:Well, one obvious motivation of Russia to do this in Ukraine also is to make Ukrainian cities, villages, homes, uninhabitable, so that they would have to move to Europe once again in large numbers, and obviously having many Ukrainians again being forced to emigrate to Europe and maybe other countries around the world would be an economic and social problem to us as well.
Juraj Krivošík:And this is definitely one of the reasons why we do have to support Ukraine, not, I would say, not as long as possible or as long as it takes, but definitely as much as needed and as quickly as possible so that they actually can defend themselves, help defend themselves, so that actually we prevent the fire and destruction of Ukrainian power plants and facilities, and definitely also trying, I would say, helping to save energy both in Ukraine and in Europe, because the more we save energy, the less dependent we will be on Russian fuels.
Juraj Krivošík:Maybe I can say that there has been a huge progress already in Europe to avoid Russian fuels. The consumption of Russian natural gas, coal and other fuels has really decreased because we have been able to switch to other fuels, switch to other suppliers and also to lower the energy consumption. But it's not the end of the story. There are still countries in Europe, such as the Czech Republic, such as Austria, slovakia, hungary and others, which are still dependent on various Russian fuels, such as oil or natural gas or nuclear fuel, and technically, of course, it's not easy to avoid, to switch to new suppliers, avoid to switch to new suppliers, but we have to do everything possible, both for the environmental and for the economic reasons, to really switch as quickly as possible so that we don't fund the Russian regime and find more secure suppliers of energy.
Ryan Grant Little:One of the goals has been to switch away from gas that arise by pipeline from Russia, and I think the alternative has been liquefied natural gas has been shipped from places like the US and building new terminals to take this in. Can you talk a little bit about that and how easily switchable is pipeline gas with LNG this?
Juraj Krivošík:is also a sensitive question and it has many angles and many aspects to be considering, because, indeed, the pipeline gas there has been already, to a large degree, a limit to imports from Russia, with the exception of Slovakia and Hungary mainly. However, the LNG imports, also from Russia, have been actually increasing in the year 2024, imports also from Russia have been actually increasing in the year 2024, which makes new billions of dollars or euros that we are actually paying to Russia. You may be aware that actually today, there could be the 14th package of sanctions being approved by the European Union, which should include restrictions to LNGs, but it only is restrictions to re-export of Russian LNGs through European ports, so that they are not allowed to actually move through European ports to other destinations, but there has been no restriction approved on the consumption of Russian LNGs in European countries. So this is actually also showing how dependent and technically uneasy it is to move to other suppliers. Another aspect could be that LNG still is fossil fuel, of course, and so some people say that by building new infrastructure for the LNG imports, the ports and the stations to move LNG from ships to the European pipelines, when this is built, there will be investments locked in it and there will be motivations to continue using LNG instead of perhaps other more sustainable energy sources such as renewables, possibly also a motivation to save energy and so on.
Juraj Krivošík:Probably this is not a black and white. There is not a black and white answer to this. From the short point of view, definitely LNG imports from other democratic countries is much better than the continuation of Russian LNG, that's for sure. We have to do everything possible to avoid Russian LNG as much possible, and that's also where one answer of energy efficiency comes to place. The more we save on heating and hot water, that can also help to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels in general and on Russian LNG as well. And in the longer term, definitely the priorities should be given to non-fossil fuels for heating, for hot water and so on, by installing renewable energy capacities.
Ryan Grant Little:Right, so it should be a combination of efficiency and renewable production capacity. But in the short term, we're actually building this capital expenditure heavy LNG terminals and things like that that then have, as you say, built-in investment in them, which means they're going to have a, say, 20-year payoff period, and that means that they need to have some kind of guaranteed contracts. Those contracts are locking in more fossil fuel shipping and use over a number of years. So we're making long-term decisions based on kind of short-term supply issues, exactly exactly that's the thing.
Juraj Krivošík:If I may make a note, the climate issue is several decades old and so we do have to do something about it. Maybe we have to give a little bit of the credit actually to Putin and to Russia, because by the situation that they have caused, by the huge increase of energy prices since 2022, that was actually a big motivation for everyone in Europe and elsewhere to switch from Russian fuel elsewhere. And the boost towards renewable energies and energy efficiency which we have seen in 2022 and afterwards is not so much thanks to the alarming news about climate change happening. It was much more about the energy security and the economic aspects the prices of energy happening. So there is a saying that there is something positive on everything bad that's happening. So the positive side of this was that the boost of renewables and energy efficiency was thanks to the Russian invasion.
Ryan Grant Little:It reminds me a little bit. Toronto, the city that I'm from, has a massive issue with car thefts right now, people's cars being stolen right out of their driveways and they're packaged off and put into containers and sent, mostly to Ghana, where they make their way across Africa, and this is driving sales of electric cars massively, because those aren't being stolen because there's no market for them abroad. So it's, you know, some of these changes happen not for the reasons that you know people are trying to improve their carbon footprint but because of necessity, like this. So, yeah, that's made me think of this. But you talked about energy security.
Ryan Grant Little:My experience has been that governments and domestic industry players and a lot of countries respond better to conversations about renewable energy from the energy security angle than from the climate angle. And I think back to in 2008, when I was in New York City at a Forbes energy event and sitting on a panel next to an oil and gas lobbyist who was talking up Canada, as you know, a great source of oil and gas and I reminded him that you know we're a foreign country that doesn't have the USA's interests at heart, and that got people's attention, as you can imagine, at a Forbes event. It's a pretty pretty Republican group and that got their attention a lot more than talking about CO2 reduction, and I wonder if you're finding in your work that the energy security message is landing as well or better than the CO2 reduction message.
Juraj Krivošík:Well, I have to say that my reaction to your question would be actually negative, in that sense that I see two negative aspects that energy security is not taken sufficiently enough in these debates. I would say that in the year 2022, when we experienced the price shocks, at that time it was really something on the table, something which was debated. But currently, when the prices firstly go down again and secondly is a psychological issue that we are getting used to this new environment, so it's not on the front page of the news anymore, so it's not actually being debated so much anymore. For example, you could read in the news how much the installation of new heat pumps and solar panels was so popular that companies couldn't match the demand and they didn't have enough employees to do the installations as quickly as they could want to. It's not the case anymore and because of the combination of less of the interest and lower energy prices, there is not such a big demand anymore and I would say the energy security should be actually much more on the agenda as it is, especially by the European governments. As we've been just discussing in the question before about the sanctions and the russian lng still flowing into europe, this is one example as well of where the energy security should be a top priority, and it is not, unfortunately, in comparison to the climate protection. My personal, really just feeling is that this is, so to say, old news. It's a thing that we know about for at least three decades, probably more, so whoever wanted to do something about it already had the chance to be a combination of the production, of the climate, of the energy security issues, of the price signals that we still have, and the combination of these three issues at least has to be the one which will be helping.
Juraj Krivošík:The promotion of renewable energies is the second, not so positive aspect, which is why I am experiencing in all these debates is about energy efficiency.
Juraj Krivošík:Even in Ukraine, but also in Europe, the debates mainly go about new energy sources, and this is a long-term problem of energy efficiency that when you are installing a new source of energy, be it a solar panel or a heat pan or a nuclear reactor or a coal power plant, whatever it's always a new source which is easy to measure, which is easy to look at. Unlike the energy efficiency, the problem of saving energy is that you actually don't see the kilowatt hours that you have saved. So I would say that in these debates to protect the climate and to keep energy supply safe and stable and with very good prices, actually energy efficiency is not debated as much as it should be, and I take it as a personal failure as well that we are not able, so to say, to sell energy efficiency as the tool which would be helping to kill so many birds with one stone, to protect the environment, to save on people's budgets and to ensure that that money doesn't go that much into countries such as Russia and also other undemocratic countries.
Ryan Grant Little:There must be some best practices these days about how to measure efficiency based on benchmarks of previous years and that type of thing. Is that getting more sophisticated? I'm thinking also using technology or, you know, different platforms that can enable this.
Juraj Krivošík:Absolutely yes, and there are many, many projects and methodologies and also legislation around Europe in the European Union which are doing this.
Juraj Krivošík:There are formal obligations on the European Union countries through European legislation, where EU member states have to save energy and have to monitor it and have to demonstrate how much energy they have saved year on year and what policies and instruments they are actually doing to save energy. You have projects or mechanisms such as energy performance contracting, where actually the ESCO firms stay safe on clients' energy, where the key component of those projects is not only to install new, more energy-efficient equipment but actually to help the clients to get a guarantee that there will be a certain energy efficiency reach, get a guarantee that there will be a certain energy efficiency reach, and also to avoid their upfront investment problem by actually paying the cost back from the savings which will be achieved in the years to come. So there is definitely a lot of this happening, but we could say that still, the installation of new solar panels or new heat pumps, a new energy infrastructure, is always more visible, more easy to understand, easier to present to the media than energy efficiency.
Ryan Grant Little:Yeah, I think as a society we're used to dealing with more and not dealing with less as a rule.
Juraj Krivošík:Absolutely yes.
Ryan Grant Little:One of the topics that you've touched on on one of your LinkedIn posts and I think you Absolutely yes, but the topic of, you know, the Ukraine war doesn't even really register these days, and the point that I always make is that you know, if you're dedicating your life to fighting climate change, you need to be active in helping Ukraine to secure a decisive military victory, because the longer this drags out, the more damage is done from a climate perspective every day. I think you and I can both agree that these calls for peace is basically just very at worst, or at best, just naive and at worst kind of nefarious, because there's no such thing as peace when you're dealing with someone like Putin. That's just a display of weakness and allows them to go further. And even if you were to freeze things as they are right now, that's, you know, allowing a very horrible occupation in a number of places. So you know, three years ago, if you were to freeze things as they are right now, that's, you know, allowing a very horrible occupation in a number of places.
Ryan Grant Little:So you know, three years ago, if you talk to me about this, I'm not exactly a hawk or like a really, you know, army or war centered person, but that's changed a lot in the past few years, and so you know, I've started to see some changes with people who are in the space especially I'm thinking of some of my fellow climate tech investors in Germany, the UK, estonia, in particular who are starting to put their money where their mouths are in terms of, you know, supporting this. But I think there's room to hear what this looks like on a day-to-day basis and what it means in terms of the biodiversity loss, in terms of CO2, in terms of the breadbasket of the world, which Ukraine is sometimes called, what this all means from an environmental standpoint, and I wonder if you could maybe lay that out a little bit and paint the picture as dire as it is.
Juraj Krivošík:I think this is an excellent question and unfortunately I have to agree with you that there is not enough attention paid to this aspect. I'm 100% on the same page as you are that actually anybody who is interested in the climate protection, in the protection of the environment, should also very strongly oppose what is Russia doing in Ukraine. And again we have to say that it's not a conflict of two sides. It's definitely Russia invading Ukraine, and everybody who is interested in how to save the climate on a global scale should also at least say loudly that part of the problem is what Russia is doing in Ukraine, also because of what we have been talking before, by Russia's interest to sell fossil fuels to Europe, but also to clients around the world. I would say, on one hand, we have to give credits to those people who were trying to save the environment, protect the climate, the environmental movement in Europe, in other countries, because actually, if we would have listened to them, then the consumption of fossil fuels would be much lower today than it is, and definitely this is something which would then hurt Russia as well by limiting their source of income. So that's a very positive thing in general, but on the other hand, as you are saying, I would say a lot of people who are working in this field. They are also very sensitive about human rights and about all the other aspects of making the world a better place, and therefore we cannot be ignorant about what is happening there because, as I said at the beginning, this is a black and white conflict. This is really a stronger, bigger country attacking its smaller neighbor and it's not, let's say, just a war.
Juraj Krivošík:There was a statistics where, if I remember correctly, according to proven cases, every 10 minutes on average, russia is committing an official war crime against Ukraine by attacking civilians. Well, you name it Raping Ukrainian women, killing civilians, kidnapping children, stealing their toilets and washing machines and televisions from their households. Ukraine has the most of the mines installed on its territory than any other country in the world. There have been so many forests burned because of the armed conflict, such a loss of the biodiversity. There have been many well, I don't remember the exact figures, but, for example, dolphins dying in the Black Sea just because of the weapons.
Juraj Krivošík:Protection of the environment should also not ask for peace, but should ask for the Ukrainian victory and for Russia actually to move back from Ukraine, because only that can stop from other conflicts happening as well. There has been statistics that the CO2 emissions which are caused by invasion are similar to the CO2 emissions which are, for example, the size of Belgium or the Netherlands. So it's like another industrialized European country which is added to the map of CO2 emissions. And if you see all the fires and explosions every day in the news, this is definitely adding to the negative environmental consequences of the situation. So by saving energy, by limiting the use of fossil fuels and nuclear energy or nuclear fuel which is exported from Russia, we are not only protecting Ukrainians to save their lives but we are also protecting the climate and the environment, not only in Ukraine, but literally globally astounding, I wonder.
Ryan Grant Little:Are you having these kinds of conversations with people in the industry and what kind of messaging is working with them to get them on board with this? And what can we do and I'm pulling the listeners in on this as well, because I think we all have a responsibility for working in climate tech to package the message in a way that people can understand it and to make it kind of understandable for, or actionable, I should say, for people as well.
Juraj Krivošík:Well, one aspect of this in the general public debate actually is for those of your listeners who are either based in Europe or follow the situation in Europe. We have just recently had the elections into the European Parliament, where people are voting for the EU members of the Parliament all around the EU, from Portugal to Finland, from Ireland to Bulgaria, and well, we could say Russia is worse in everything in health care, in the quality of life, in the infrastructure, in the educational system, the rate of alcoholism, and so on and so on. They are worse in everything, but there is one thing which they are really good at, and that's fake news spreading. And so in these European Parliament elections, one of the very strong aspects we could see in many countries was actually an anti-Green Deal sentiment, and that's definitely something which Russia likes and which Russia was actively supporting, because if people would start being anti-Green Deal, anti-environmental legislation and requirements, that consequently means that more fossil fuels would have to be consumed and that means, of course, more money for the Russian regime. So this is, on the general level, how they are trying to influence the public debate about the need to protect the climate. Secondly, in the individual conversations, also something which is being debated about being tired of the war.
Juraj Krivošík:People in Europe, despite probably we are living in the best times we ever have lived, still people are tired of the war times we ever have lived.
Juraj Krivošík:Still people are tired of the war. We cannot imagine what it actually must be like already now in June, where there is several hours of blackouts in, like you said, in Kiev and in other Ukrainian cities already happening. Now this is not happening in European cities, but despite many of us actually don't feel any real consequences of this, still we feel tired. We are losing the attention of this, but we should know, because not only it is the right thing to do, it's also. If Russia wouldn't be stopped in Ukraine, then they would move ahead to other countries and then the cost of protecting ourselves from Russia would be much higher. So, therefore, I see the climate investment, the efforts to save energy, efforts to promote renewable and alternative energy sources, as something which is having these at least two or three advantages at the same time not only saving on the money, but also saving the climate and the clean air and on ensuring security and peace in our region.
Ryan Grant Little:And this is something we do have to keep reminding our governments and politicians, the industry and businesses, and also media and individual citizens and households that it is our best interest to do so, yeah, putin was right, unfortunately, about a couple of things, and one is that we in the West have short attention spans and that we're kind of allergic to sacrifice, and we're seeing that play out, this whole narrative of fatigue, and it's basically just because people don't want to hear about it anymore, right? It's not that it's even affecting most people in any kind of way, other than they just you know it's. They've seen that movie and they want to change the channel, kind of thing. Exactly, exactly, yeah, so you know, if there are companies out there listening who want to find ways to reduce their climate footprint, to reduce their energy usage, what kind of companies do you work with at Seven and who should get and what kind of companies should be getting in touch with you?
Juraj Krivošík:We have both public and private companies as clients.
Juraj Krivošík:We advise them on the technical infrastructure, basically how to lower their energy bills, by doing energy audits or some assessments of how they spend on the energy in their buildings with their technologies. Mainly this is, of course, heating, hot water technologies, lighting, air conditioning and so on. We also help them to understand what are the legal requirements as a result of the EU, the national or the European legislation in terms of how the energy should be saved international or the European legislation in terms of how the energy should be saved. And thirdly, we also organize awareness campaigns and understanding on why energy should be saved, both to public, large private companies, but also to the individual households. And these projects we organize in the Czech Republic, in Central and Eastern Europe, and very often we also participate to European consortia that are organizing similar projects around the EU and also sometimes in the region of Eastern Europe, in the EU accession countries, including Ukraine, but also in the other countries around the European Union which are trying to join the EU, and sometimes also in other countries in Asia, africa, latin America.
Ryan Grant Little:I'll link your LinkedIn in the show notes for people who want to get in touch with you, and let's leave it at that. Thank you so much for all the work that you're doing and for the awareness that you're raising. I really enjoy following your posts on LinkedIn and encourage people who are listening to look you up and do the same, thank you. Thank you for the invitation, Ryan.
Juraj Krivošík:I really appreciate it. You are also interested in this topic and appreciate the invitation. It's been a pleasure for me.
Ryan Grant Little:Thank you. Thanks for listening to another Climate Tech Podcast. It would mean a lot if you would subscribe, rate and share this podcast. Get in touch anytime with tips and guest recommendations at hello at climate tech podcom. Find me, ryan Grant Little, on LinkedIn. I'll be back with another episode next week. Bye for now.
