Moldova is surrounded on three sides by Ukraine, with Romania to the West. Like many countries in Eastern Europe, its energy systems are a legacy of the Soviet era. Infrastructure runs East towards Russia. For decades Moldova has run on Russian gas piped through Ukraine, and cheap gas provides both heat and electricity.
You can probably guess what happens next, but there’s a twist. Within Moldova’s territory is the contested region of Transnistria, an unrecognised quasi-state that is mainly Russian speaking. It’s also home to the Cuciurgan power station, built by the Soviets in the 1960s to provide power to the whole region. Cuciurgan is big enough to provide all of Transnistria’s power and 75% of Moldova’s.
Sourcing three quarters of your electricity from a contested region is an obvious vulnerability, but there were reasons why it was tolerated. Electricity exports were one of the only legal sources of income for Transnistria, and it supported their fragile economy. More importantly, Russia provided gas to Cuciurgan for free as a gesture of goodwill towards Transnistria. It was cheap enough to be a risk worth taking.
Predictably, Russia’s war of aggression with Ukraine threw all of that into disarray. Transnistria declared itself neutral and wouldn’t support Russian attacks from across its borders. Moldova’s pro-European government sided with Ukraine. The pipeline deal with Ukraine expired and Russia declined to re-route gas through Turkey. Moldova found itself without heating in the January cold.
Russia had the option to use other pipelines and maintain supply, but it didn’t. It used its gas to blackmail its smaller neighbours, in the hope of destabilising Ukraine’s allies. Transnistria folded and accepted a Russia deal for gas. Under the leadership of Maia Sandu, their first female president, Moldova leaned the other way. They chose to rapidly diversify away from Russian fossil fuels, working with the EU and sourcing more power from Romania.
Renewable energy has been a big part of this. A big expansion of solar power and first steps into wind power have pushed domestically produced electricity up to 36%. There’s more to come, with a newly liberalised energy market and regulator – dependence on Russian gas had held back the development of modern institutions around energy. The country is making up for lost time, and there’s an urgency to all of this. The faster Moldova can build capacity, the quicker it can reduce costs for consumers, whose bills have rocketed.
Energy efficiency can help here too. This hasn’t been a priority in the past as power was so cheap. With support from international partners, the government has launched its first energy efficiency drive. Grants are available through a nationwide ‘Casa Verde’ scheme, so that people can pay for insulation, new heating and ventilation systems, and solar PV and batteries.
This transition has been driven by crisis, but it will have multiple long term benefits. Energy production within Moldova will reduce expensive energy imports and support economic growth where it is needed – Moldova is the poorest country in Europe. It will reduce carbon emissions and lower Moldova’s carbon footprint. That’s important because Moldova is also the most climate vulnerable country in Europe, mainly because of drought risk. And most importantly, it will provide energy security, and break a long-standing tool of coercion that Russia has wielded over its former empire.
In fact, there’s a chance that the war-prompted rush for clean energy could be the making of Moldova. We’ll have to wait and see. But as Suriya Jananti wrote in Time Magazine in 2023, when this was much more theoretical than it is now, the accelerated rebuild of its energy infrastructure could make Moldova “the continent’s first truly green country.” We’ll have to wait and see whether it comes anywhere near that, but for now Moldova is an interesting case study in how fossil fuels can hold a nation back, and how liberating the energy transition can be.
The Earthbound Report 