It's hard to drone a solar panel

[Oscar]

It's hard to drone a solar panel

The war in Ukraine may be adding resilience to the list of clean energy's virtues

Bill McKibben - October 04, 2025 - The Crucial Years

EXCERPT: "Over the course of the war, by sheer necessity, Ukraine has developed a formidable drone industry, and increasingly it is using them against a singular set of targets: the oil refining and transport infrastructure spread out across its sprawling foe. Russia has formidable air defenses, of course—Ukraine couldn’t fly a bomber across 1,400 kilometers of the country’s airspace to bomb a refinery. But the small and comparatively slow drones have proved equal to the task. As the FT reported last week . . . .

'Sixteen of Russia’s 38 refineries have been hit since the start of August, some of them multiple times, including one of Russia’s largest fuel-processing facilities, the 340,000 barrel-a-day plant at Ryazan, close to Moscow.

The strikes have disrupted more than 1 million barrels a day of Russia’s refining capacity, according to Energy Aspects, a research group. Diesel exports, if they maintain the current rate, will fall to the lowest monthly total in September since 2020, according to both OilX and Vortexa, which track cargoes.

“It seems to be the most effective campaign that Ukraine has carried out so far,” said Benedict George, head of European petroleum products pricing at Argus, which reports commodity prices.' . . . ."

[ https://substack.com/@billmckibben/p-175257636 ]