The Ukrainian town of Burshtyn is one of the few places in the world where the snow falls black.
Located in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, 560 kilometers southwest of Kyiv, this town of 15,000 sits near Europe’s dirtiest coal-fired thermal power plant. Soot and other chemicals from poorly filtered chimneys settle on the adjacent area, making the snow dirty, the rains acidic, the locals sick, and air quality catastrophically dangerous.
The plant’s owner — Ukraine’s richest man Rinat Akhmetov — uses his formidable lobbying power to avoid repercussions and strike down any attempts at environmental regulation.
Bills to rein in emissions fail time and again in parliament, where Akhmetov reportedly controls up to 100 lawmakers, an allegation that he denies.
Top polluter
Ukraine consistently ranks among the top three air polluters in Europe. Every fifth death in Ukraine can be traced to poor air quality, which kills 54,000 people in Ukraine per year.
“Being Europe’s biggest polluter is a questionable achievement” Kostiantyn Krynytskyi, an energy expert with environmental nonprofit Ecodia, told the Kyiv Post. “The use of coal poses enormous risks to the health and lives of our citizens.”
When coal is burned to generate electricity, three main pollutants — PM10, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxide — are released into the air. These can travel thousands of kilometers, making air pollution a global problem.
PM10 stands for particulate matter 10 micrometers in diameter, such as coal ash. It can get into the bloodstream and cause strokes, as well as heart and lung diseases.
“Coal ash is very poisonous to humans because it contains toxic heavy metals. When it settles on the ground, the soil becomes contaminated and the quality of agricultural produce deteriorates,” Oleg Savytskyi, a board member with Ecodia, told the Kyiv Post.
Sulfur dioxide can cause a deadly accumulation of fluids in the lungs and worsen asthma attacks and existing heart diseases.
Nitrogen oxide also attacks the respiratory system and can lead to asthma and lung cancer.
“Coal energy in Ukraine is the largest source of air pollution with these toxic substances,” Savytskyi said.
Indeed, Ukraine produces over 70% of all emissions of PM10, 27% of sulfur dioxide, and 16% of nitrogen oxides in all of Europe, including Turkey, according to a new study by climate and energy think tank Ember.
Europe’s top 10 emitters of PM10 include eight Ukrainian power plants. The top five sources of PM10 are all in Ukraine.
Half of the plants on Ember’s top 10 list belong to Akhmetov’s energy conglomerate, DTEK.
Andriy Gerus, a member of parliament with President Volodymyr Zelensky’s 244-member Servant of the People party, said the study reveals a lot about how Akhmetov gets away with pollution.
“The findings show how Akhmetov political lobby works: if Akhmetov benefits from European rules, Ukraine implements it (European prices for electricity, feed-in tariffs for renewables etc.),” Gerus told the Kyiv Post.
“If European rules mean that Akhmetov will pay more, Ukraine does not introduce such rules (railway tariffs, taxes for CO2 emission, taxes for coal and iron ore extraction etc.). The solution is quite simple — to increase taxes for emissions. Ukrainian taxes for CO2 amount to 0.5 euro per ton vs. 20–40 euro per ton in the European Union.”
Ukrainian billionaire Rinat Akhmetov, the country’s richest oligarch, meets with the management of Zaporizhstal metallurgical plant, one of the many enterprises he owns, in Zaporizhzhya on May 16, 2013. Akhmetov has invariably been one of the most influential people in Ukraine for at least two decades. (UNIAN)
The owner
DTEK has denied violating environmental rules, stating that it operates “exclusively in compliance with environmental legislation and within the emission permit.”
The company further claimed that it reduced its harmful emissions by 58% in the past eight years by modernizing its coal power plants, including the Burshtyn facility, and building more renewable energy sources.
DTEK controls two-thirds of coal power in the country and has deep ties with the Ukrainian government.
For example, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine found evidence that DTEK colluded with Ukraine’s energy regulator to create the Rotterdam+ scheme, an electricity pricing policy that allegedly bilked Hr 39 billion (about $1.4 billion) from Ukrainian consumers. The company has fiercely denied wrongdoing.
The 101 Tower business center hosts the headquarters of Ukraine’s largest energy company DTEK on Feb. 11, 2021. (Volodymyr Petrov)
Akhmetov is widely reported to have ties to Ukrainian politicians. Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal held senior positions at DTEK prior to his current role. Shmyhal was the general director of the Burshtyn plant, Europe’s top air polluter.
The oligarch controls at least 100 lawmakers in parliament, according to investigative project Nashi Groshi.
Akhmetov has denied controlling anybody.
However, all 25 members of the Batkivshchyna faction, over 30 lawmakers from Servant of the People and many others consistently vote for Akhmetov’s interests, journalists say.
Unwanted bills
Since 2020, parliament has twice failed to adopt bill No. 4167 “On prevention, reduction and control of industrial pollution.”
The bill sets guidelines for the gradual reduction of harmful emissions from industrial enterprises. One key aspect of the bill is the requirement to gradually modernize coal-burning power plants to lower dangerous emissions.
“We are not forcing anyone to close their coal enterprises, we just ask the business to transition to better, European technologies which will lower emissions,” Oleg Bondarenko, the head of the parliament’s Committee on Environmental Policy and Nature Management, told the Kyiv Post.
But evidently, many lawmakers think that’s too much to ask. The bill has recently failed to get enough votes and was sent back for revision for the second time on May 21. Batkivshchyna lawmakers, who traditionally push Akhmetov’s agenda, either voted against the bill or abstained, as did 50 “Servants.”
Svitlana Sushko, the director of the Reform Support Team at the Environment Ministry, sees this as evidence that coal industry insiders are fighting against reforms.
“The failure to vote on Bill No. 4167 in the parliament for the second time, according to some politicians, shows the great influence of dishonest business and opposition to modernization,” she told the Kyiv Post.
Emission standards are hard to enforce when power plants often block government inspectors from entering the premises.
DTEK’s plant in Burshtyn hasn’t been inspected in years.
“Inspectors just can’t access these enterprises — either because the plant’s management finds loopholes in the law to bar them entry, or something else,” Sushko told the Kyiv Post.
As a result, the plant’s management pays “ridiculously low” fines and avoids any real responsibility.
Bill No. 3091 “About state ecological control” can increase fines for obstructing the work of inspectors. But it’s also being blocked by lobbyists.
“The biggest problem is that the oligarchs are now actively using their influence groups in parliament to delay the adoption of Bills 4167 and 3091,” Savytskyi says.
No money
In 2017, the government adopted a “National plan to reduce emissions from large combustion plants.” It aims to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions by 72% by 2033 and sulfur and dust emissions by 95% by 2028.
This plan, along with bill No. 4167, is Ukraine’s response to directive 2010/75/EU of the European Union that obliges Ukraine to cut industrial emissions and modernize combustion plants.
Yet the plan is failing, and Ukraine won’t make the deadlines, experts say.
A drone picture shows an aerial view of the DTEK tower and the Nº1 Kyivenerho heat supply station in Kyiv on Dec. 7, 2020. DTEK is owned by Rinat Akhmetov, the wealthiest oligarch in Ukraine, and produces the lion’s share of Ukraine’s coal-fired electricity. DTEK is accused of creating a lucrative scheme known as Rotterdam+ which made Ukrainians overpay Hr 39 billion for electricity. (Volodymyr Petrov)
Business owners blame unreasonably high expectations, COVID‑19, and lack of government financing.
“Lack of sources of funding for enterprises in the industry has led to the inability of plant operators to make capital-intensive long-term investments in environmental measures required by the national plan,” claimed representatives of the European Business Association Committee for Industrial Ecology and Sustainable Development.
However, Ukraine has spent 751 million euros to support the coal industry in 2018 and 2019, Krynytskyi told the Kyiv Post.
This is the largest amount of direct coal subsidies of all member states of the Energy Community, which Ukraine is part of.
Bondarenko and Sushko think that coal power plant owners oppose bill 4167 because modernization is expensive.
“Their argument is that the government has to invest, but this leads nowhere because that means nothing will get done until the state finds the money,” Sushko says.
“They bought these enterprises basically for free during the privatization period,” Bondarenko said.
“Now, as their productive capacities are going down, owners are just trying to squeeze everything they can from these properties and then close them down for good.”
