The impact of the Russia-Ukraine war on renewable energy

Global adoption of renewable energy has increased rapidly since the early 2000s, driven partly by learning-by-doing mechanisms. Despite this progress, the world remains below what is needed to reach net-zero by 2030. This paper examines how the Russia-Ukraine war accelerated Europe’s clean energy transition. The European Union relied heavily on Russian natural gas for electricity generation, and the war disrupted this relationship, creating a supply shock. Countries experienced this shock at varying intensities depending on their pre-war import exposure to Russian gas. We exploit variation in pre-war Russian gas dependency and find that more dependent countries transitioned faster post-war compared to less-exposed counterparts. We develop a model featuring learning-by-doing and heterogeneous fossil-fuel dependency to rationalize these findings. Preliminary results show economies accelerate their renewable transition approximately four periods after a permanent supply shock, while highly exposed countries do so up to eight periods earlier due to higher electricity prices, lower fossil-fuel investment returns, and learning-by-doing amplification. Low-exposure countries show minimal response. Crucially, this acceleration only sustains when the shock is permanent, suggesting that learning-bydoing alone cannot generate lasting effects from temporary disruptions.