Most energy data is hidden through war. How can this hurt Ukraine?
What is wrong with this solution? With the beginning of the war, the government and other data managers have almost immediately restricted access to the registers, the open data portal "turned off", and from the state -authors' sites, almost all statistics and everything that, according to state servants, may somehow be used against Ukraine. Access was closed to almost everything that, if necessary, to act as quickly as possible - it was absolutely exactly the right solution.
However, the state of uncertainty has passed, the situation with the evacuation of staff is regulated, the main processes more or less adapted to new realities. Therefore, it is now possible and necessary to review the state policy on public access to the data as a whole and in the field of energy in particular. The current situation with the total closure of the data no longer looks so substantiated in terms of state security, moreover - is harmful to business and the public.
Energy generates the most statistics when compared to other areas of the economy. With the introduction of martial law due to a full -scale invasion of Russia, the managers closed access or stopped updating 60% of information on the work of the energy sector of Ukraine. By another 15%, either substantially restricted access, or data updates are expected only at the end of the year and it is unknown whether they will be updated.
This is evidenced by the analysis of the Energy Map service, which provides access to all public power data in machine -reading format. How did the data disappear from the public space? Information on foreign trade, production, use and inventories of energy resources, information about "green" generation, subsidies (number of recipients and the amount of accrued payments) came under "reduction".
These are those data that have a high renewal frequency (once a month or more) and are of high value for analysis and only 7. 5% of them continue to be updated. Also from open access were taken quarterly monitoring reports on energy market and annual reports from the energy regulator (NERCEP), which were a source of large amount of information on the state and development of gas and electricity markets, tariffs, as well as data on the development - and many other valuable information.
The operator of the electricity transmission system "Ukrenergo" "closed" the reports on conformity assessment (sufficiency) of generating capacity and ten -year plans for the development of the transmission system, which, among other things, were a valuable source of data on promising electricity development.
*The category "Other" includes data that is not fully updated or information about their updating is not an interesting fact that the closure of data from the beginning of the restrictions was not comprehensive. For example, for a second, the publication of detailed data on intra -day (VDR) and "a day in advance" (RDN) of electricity markets from SE "Market operator" stopped.
Practice has shown that this did not cause negative consequences, but on the contrary - market participants had at least some guidelines. At the same time, Ukrenergo NEC has stopped publishing data on other segments of the electricity market - bilateral agreements (total sales volumes) and balancing market - which are inherently the same as the VDR and RDN data.
Another illogical case is when the operator of underground gas storage facilities "Ukrtransgaz" has closed data on gas volumes with PIG, but at the same time the same data in the aggregated form are available on the European platform of underground gas storage factors AGSI+. There are other resources where you can find information that is closed in Ukraine.
It is a platform of transparency of the European network of operators of ENTSO-E electricity transmission systems, European energy exchange EEX, Eurostat. Such portals are quite open. It was also absolutely incomprehensible in terms of expediency, the decision of individual managers to completely delete open access data. As a result, users have lost access to historical data, which also have their value. At the same time, through web archival service they can still be obtained.
In fact, now all historical statistics are only available on the Energy Map service website. About half of data downloads from the service from the beginning of the military invasion of the Russian Federation have come to the data that the managers have completely removed from their official websites. Moreover, from individual officials and civil servants can now hear theses that it was not necessary to disclose so much data, because high transparency seems to be harmful to the country.
According to the annual study of the Index of Energy Transparency, Ukraine has steadily improved access to information and quality of data in the fields of energy. Transparency is one key prerequisite for the country's investment attractiveness, to achieve better economic efficiency, and to counteract corruption, which is really harmful to Ukraine.
Which data should you return? The situation with the publication of data is quite realistic to balance so as not to harm and at the same time not to lose the achievement from the transparency we had before the beginning of the war. It is a tool for the work of a large number of users - business, investors, analysts, journalists, foreign partners, the public - which allows you to better analyze markets, seek corruption, study changes in consumer behavior after legislative changes and more.
It makes sure that it makes sense to get access to the information that is relevant as of the beginning of the invasion. The enemy has it, and if he does not, then get from the web archive is not a problem. Access to current market statistics and consumption and production data should be completely restored. The enemy without this data has a "goal bank" of energy infrastructure.
Again, the enemy knows how to break supply chains, and market statistics will only reflect this impact and is not the root cause, so its concealment does not make sense, but on the contrary - it harms the work of market participants. An unnecessary confirmation of this is the case with the preservation of the publication of data on RDN and VDR, which has not stopped. It is worth considering the adaptation option to the current conditions.