By Kate Abnett and America Hernandez<\/p>\n
PARIS, Feb 18 (Reuters) – Canada will step up support to Ukraine’s energy sector, working with industry to supply \u200coil and gas equipment on favourable terms and boost renewable energy investments, the \u200ctwo governments said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Russia has targeted power stations, electricity transmission lines and gas facilities as part \u200bof its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which began in February 2022. Russian strikes this week on Ukrainian power infrastructure killed three people and left tens of thousands without power and heat.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Ukraine and Canada agreed on a strategic energy partnership at \u200ca meeting in Paris, where \u2060Canada’s government said it would work with industry to transfer oil and gas sector equipment to Ukraine on concessional terms, and \u2060promote investments in Ukraine’s energy security.<\/p>\n
Canada will also alert domestic industries to opportunities to invest in Ukrainian renewable energy projects and reconstruction of hydropower plants, according to the published \u200bagreement.<\/p>\n
“This is \u200bnot simply reconstruction. It is modernization under \u200bpressure,” Canadian energy minister Tim \u200cHodgson told reporters.<\/p>\n
RISK ASSESSMENTS TO COUNTER HYBRID THREATS<\/p>\n
The two sides will carry out risk assessments and exercises to counter hybrid threats to energy infrastructure, and strengthen commercial relations on nuclear fuel supply.<\/p>\n
The deal, which includes sharing technical advice on developing infrastructure for non-Russian gas supplies to Ukraine, is not legally binding and planned investments would \u200cneed to be followed up with companies.<\/p>\n
Ukraine is \u200bemerging from its coldest winter since Russia’s 2022 \u200binvasion. Russia’s air strikes have \u200bcaused days-long outages of electricity, water and heating as temperatures have \u200csunk as low as minus 20 \u200bdegrees Celsius, while households \u200band businesses that still have power face soaring energy bills.<\/p>\n
Ukraine’s central bank last month revised down its growth forecasts for this year to 1.8% \u200bfrom 2% because of the \u200cenergy crisis. Its energy minister said last week that power demand was \u200babout a third larger than supply capacity.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by America Hernandez, Forrest \u200bCrellin, Kate Abnett; Editing by Bernadette Baum)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Kate Abnett and America Hernandez PARIS, Feb 18 (Reuters) – Canada will step up support to Ukraine’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":484316,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[45,49,48,46,91704,304,10612],"class_list":{"0":"post-484315","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-economy","12":"tag-energy-sector","13":"tag-renewable-energy","14":"tag-ukraine"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/484316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}