The fossil fuel era is ending in flames

[Previous: Operation Spiderweb is the future of war]

The world is shifting away from fossil fuels, but not quickly enough to stave off climate change. Could the Russia-Ukraine war accelerate the pace?

For years, Russia served as Europe's gas station. Despite having few other industries of note, Russia has abundant oil and gas reserves, which it was happy to sell to European nations to cement their economic links.

However, Vladimir Putin's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine showed Europeans the folly of depending on a belligerent, warmongering dictator for their energy needs. Like any drug dealer, Putin wanted his customers hooked so he'd have leverage over them. At the start of the war, Russia engaged in brazen energy blackmail, threatening to cut off the fuel supply unless the E.U. looked the other way.

But to the Europeans' credit, they didn't knuckle under. They slapped Russia with sanctions, sought out alternative sources of fuel, and redoubled their efforts to shift to renewable energy. Putin's attempt at blackmail fizzled: in the first month of 2025, Russia's last gas pipeline to Europe was shut off for good.

That leaves Russia's oil, which has been a tougher nut to crack. Western countries imposed price caps to hamper Putin's war machine. In response, Russia has been camouflaging its oil exports with a shadow fleet of ships owned by shell companies, which makes enforcement a cat-and-mouse game. Russia has also been increasing its sales to China and India, which haven't agreed to the price cap.

Kinetic sanctions

That was the state of affairs until this year.

Ukraine was long forbidden from using Western weapons to strike Russian soil, due to politicians' fears of escalating the war into a bigger conflict. However, Ukraine is stepping up domestic production of long-range attack drones and cruise missiles. With these homegrown weapons, it's gained the capability to carry out strikes deep inside Russian territory.

Whereas Russian missile and drone attacks have no objective other than causing Ukrainian civilians as much suffering as possible, Ukraine has aimed squarely at Russia's soft underbelly: the oil infrastructure that the Russian economy depends on.

Ukraine has been targeting Russian pipelines, fuel depots and refineries. Since August, the pace of attacks has rapidly intensified, hitting more than two dozen major oil refineries. Among other targets, Ukrainian drones bombed the Kirishi and Ryazan refineries, two of Russia's largest. Ukraine has also struck the Koltsevoy pipeline near Moscow and the Tuapse oil terminal on the Black Sea.

Around a quarter of Russia's refining capacity is offline, and Russians are feeling the consequences. According to BBC estimates, more than half of Russian regions have experienced supply disruptions: long lines, strict gas rationing, or gas pumps running dry entirely. The Russian government has banned gasoline exports until at least the end of the year.

These attacks aren't just meant to cause inconvenience for ordinary Russians, or even to limit supplies of fuel for Russian military vehicles. The point is to deprive Russia of revenue that powers Putin's war machine.

Between a third and a half of Russia's federal budget comes from oil and gas. Without this cash flow, the Russian economy would crash and its military would sputter to a halt.

The value of decentralized energy

Whatever the ultimate effect of these strikes on this war, this should be a lesson for national leaders who are paying attention. Among all the other reasons to speed the energy transition, fossil fuel infrastructure is vulnerable. There's no way it can be defended against a determined enemy.

Refineries—especially the critical cracking columns that convert crude oil into high-value products like gasoline—are easy to destroy and hard to repair. Fuel depots and pumping stations are tempting targets, liable to catastrophic explosion if hit. Pipelines carry fuel for hundreds of miles and can't be protected along their entire length.

As drones become cheaper and more capable, the risks only increase. This kind of long-distance, precision-strike capability used to be the sole province of nation-states. Now non-state actors can do it too. In an asymmetric conflict, terrorists could use drones to inflict huge, disproportionate damage on critical infrastructure. Such an attack would be a law enforcement nightmare: easy to carry out and hard to trace.

Of course, hostile states could do the same thing to their rivals, but on an even greater scale. They could wage an Operation Spiderweb-style attack consisting of massive drone swarms attacking all at once, overpowering any air defense and blitzing vital, vulnerable infrastructure. It would be a Pearl Harbor for the drone era.

Imagine the consequences of such an attack: fires burning for days, clouds of toxic black smoke shrouding cities, oil slicks spreading from ruptured pipelines. Imagine long lines at gas stations from panic buying, pumps running dry, stranded cars abandoned on the roadside, air travel grounded, cargo rotting in ports, skyrocketing prices, sudden economic shocks. If this scenario isn't on every politician's mind, it should be.

By contrast, a society powered by green energy would be all but immune to such disruptions. Renewable-energy assets are decentralized in a way that fossil fuel infrastructure isn't, which makes them intrinsically resilient. A nation where every home and business was powered by a solar panel on its roof would have no single point of failure to target. Communities can support each other through autonomous microgrids. Electric cars can be recharged at any outlet. Even industrial-scale photovoltaic and wind farms are far less vulnerable. You can destroy one wind turbine or one solar panel, but there are countless more.

The energy transition isn't just about the sustainability of our civilization, justice for the global poor, or conserving the planet from human encroachment. Those should be more than enough reasons for everyone to care about it, but for those who need extra persuasion, it's also a national security issue. As long as there are power-hungry dictators and free people who want to resist them, we have reason to repower the world as quickly as possible.