In this analysis we have estimated a reduction in the total, pre-war emissions during the first 18 months of the war to be 158 MtCO2-eq. At the same time, 18 months of war resulted in additional 77 Mt CO2-eq. of emissions.
Our estimate of the war-related emissions of CO2, CH4 and N2O for the first 18 months of the war in Ukraine is 77 MtCO2-eq., with the symmetric interval of combined relative uncertainty estimated to be +/– 22 % (95 % confidence interval), with a standard deviation σ = 8.804 MtCO2-eq.
The Ukrainian Environmental Protection Minister was quoted on October 18, 2022 with an estimate of 31 MtCO2-eq. emissions for the first 7 months of war (Birnbaum, 2022), but without specifying the structure of these emissions. de Klerk et al. (2023) show the numbers as 21.9 MtCO2-eq. from warfare and 19.7 MtCO2-eq. from res, but this only covers the first 12 months of the war, and the same war-related emission processes and accounting boundaries are not always considered.
We estimated CO2 emissions from forest fires during 18 months of the war to be 16.73 MtCO2-eq. (+/− 44.2 %), including 14.84 Mt of CO2, 44.5 kt of CH4, and 2.46 kt of N2O
Regarding emissions from fires of agricultural lands, we estimated these to be 6.46 MtCO2-eq. (+/− 84.7 %), including 5.73 Mt of CO2, 17.2 kt of CH4, and 0.95 kt of N2O.
According to the NIR submitted by Ukraine in 2023 the total GHG emissions/removals for 2021, in all sectors, amounted to 224.2 Mt CO2, 2862 kt CH4, and 147.0 kt N2O, with a total of 339.
Based on the emissions of this sector in 2021 (NIRU, 2023), it is possible to estimate the reduction of emissions in the public electricity and heat production sector in 2022 to be 27.1 MtCO2-eq. (27.0 MtCO2, 1.2 ktCH4, and 0.38 ktN2O). Given that this reduction occurred over a period of 311 days, starting on February 24, 2022, we roughly estimated the reduction of emissions in the public power and heat production sector during the first 18 months of the war (from February 24, 2022 to August 23, 2023) to be 47.7 MtCO2-eq.
