The climate bill for the invasion of Ukraine is up to 250 million tons of greenhouse gases

In addition to deaths, injuries and displaced people, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is leaving a negative environmental footprint that is contributing to worsening global warming. The three years of war have resulted in greenhouse gas emissions of 230 million tons of CO₂eq (carbon dioxide equivalent, the unit used to measure these gases). This is an enormous amount, similar to what 120 million combustion-engine automobiles would emit on average in an entire year. To understand its dimension, it also helps to remember that a country like Spain, with almost 49 million inhabitants, emitted some 270 million tons in 2023. The calculation of the climate footprint of the Ukraine war has been prepared by several experts grouped together in the Initiative on GHG accounting of war, which has already published several reports of this type.

Lennard de Klerk, the study’s lead author, explains to EL PAÍS that the figure they offer considers “all the emissions that can be attributed to the war,” including those of both sides. “For example, the use of fuel by the Russian army as the aggressor and the Ukrainian army as the defender is taken into account,” he adds by email. To prepare their calculation, explains this carbon footprint expert, they started from a premise: to track the emissions that have resulted from the conflict and that would not have occurred if Russia had not invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

To arrive at the global figure for greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), the authors take into account those caused directly by the war, but also those linked to current and future reconstruction, forest fires, damage to energy infrastructure, refugee displacement, and civil aviation. Those linked to the fighting occupy the highest position in the three years of conflict, and have grown as the invasion has continued. “War emissions began with 21.9 million tons of CO₂eq in the first 12 months, increased by 29.7 million tons of CO₂eq in the second 12 months and by another 30.5 in the third 12 months, totalling 82.1 million after three years,” the study notes. Among all these sources of emissions, the most prominent are means of transport, that is, “the fossil fuel used by tanks and fighter planes, which consume a lot of diesel and kerosene.”

The second major component that contributes most to the climate bill of the three years of war is the reconstruction of housing, public buildings, and infrastructure that will have to be undertaken and which “will be a titanic task,” according to the researchers. The majority of the damage, the report explains, occurred during the first weeks of the conflict, but it warns that “frontline urban centers continue to suffer serious damage.” “Rebuilding what has been destroyed will require enormous volumes of construction materials, of which carbon-intensive concrete and steel will cause more than 80% of future emissions” of this component, which amounts to 62.2 million tons of gases.

Another important source — which also saw its emissions soar in 2024 — are forest fires, which “made a relatively large contribution in the third year due to the very dry and hot climate during the summer,” notes De Klerk. The report elaborates on this: “2024 stands out as a worrying example of how climate change and armed conflict reinforce each other, leading to an increase in global warming.” Forest fires caused by the war intensified dramatically last year, affecting an area of 92,100 hectares in Ukraine, three times the area that had been burned in the first two years of the invasion. “As it is dangerous for firefighters to operate in the war zone, these fires spread uncontrollably, growing in size and intensity, and causing carbon emissions and destroying vegetation and other natural carbon basins,” the researchers explain.

The report also breaks down emissions caused by the destruction of energy infrastructure. This takes into account Russian attacks on oil depots and refineries, along with the destruction of power plants and sabotage of the electricity grid. It also includes the methane released into the atmosphere as a result of the sabotage in September 2022 of the Nord Stream gas pipeline network, which transported natural gas from Russia to Western Europe via the Baltic. The authorship of the explosions remains unclear, but several media reports this summer pointed to an operation carried out by Ukraine after the Russian invasion.

The Initiative on GHG accounting of war is supported by the European Climate Foundation, a philanthropic organization focused on promoting policies to combat global warming. It also collaborated with the Ministry for Environmental Protection and Natural Resources of Ukraine to analyze the three years of conflict. The report argues that “the Russian Federation should be held responsible for these emissions and the resulting climate-related damages.” It estimates the climate costs of emissions from the three years of war at $42 billion.

De Klerk points out that until now, no armed conflict had ever taken into account the climate footprint of war. “The closest precedent is an estimate of the fuel use of the U.S. army during the war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan,” says the researcher. “But this did not include other sources of emissions such as forest fires or emissions from reconstruction,” he adds.

Beyond the climate footprint, the war is leaving “widespread” environmental damage, according to the lead author of the report. “Examples of this are soil contamination from damage to oil depots, unexploded ordnance leaking toxic materials into the soil, wastewater treatment facilities and mountains of waste that were flooded after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in June 2023, the occupation of natural parks...”

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