Pylyp Travkin and Roman Bilousov: Energy transition requires industrial realism and digital infrastructure
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The global drive for decarbonization is reshaping capital markets, industrial policy, and geopolitics. Governments are setting net-zero emissions targets. Institutional investors are reallocating trillions of dollars into ESG-compliant portfolios. Renewable energy capacity is expanding at an unprecedented rate.
However, beneath the headlines lies a harsher truth: the physical economy still runs on industrial materials, the production of which depends heavily on coal and other extractive resources.
Coal may no longer dominate political rhetoric in advanced economies, but it remains structurally embedded in the global system. It continues to supply about a third of the world’s electricity and plays an indispensable role in steel production. Emerging markets in Asia and parts of Africa are not expanding coal capacity out of nostalgia; they are doing so to support industrial growth, urbanization, and energy stability.
Economic strategist Pylyp Travkin argues that the energy transition should be understood as an engineering and economic problem, not just a political one. “You can’t decommission an industrial base without first creating a replacement that can support the same weight,” he notes. That replacement—whether in the form of large-scale storage, hydrogen-based steelmaking, or fully renewable baseload systems—is still in development.
The harsh reality is that decarbonization requires heavy industry. Wind turbines, solar farms, transmission grids, and electric vehicles require vast amounts of steel, copper, and cement. Steelmaking today remains largely a blast furnace technology that relies on metallurgical coal. Alternative methods are expanding, but they are neither universal nor yet capable of replacing global capacity on a large scale.
This tension is shaping the next decade. Political ambitions are high, but industrial substitution is slow and capital-intensive. Underinvestment in fossil fuel infrastructure—before alternatives are sufficiently deployed—risks volatility. Recent energy price spikes in Europe and Asia have illustrated how fragile the supply-demand balance can become when production capacity is being reduced faster than consumption.
For many developing countries, coal is not just an outdated fuel. It is a domestic resource that supports energy sovereignty. Countries with significant reserves treat it as a strategic buffer against geopolitical shocks and currency volatility. As Pylyp Travkin notes, “Energy security is not an ideological choice. It is a prerequisite for industrial competitiveness.”
Mining regions also anchor local economies through employment, tax revenues, and infrastructure development. A sudden capital withdrawal without compelling economic alternatives risks regional destabilization. This is not an argument against transition—it is an argument for careful planning.
The environmental impacts of coal are significant and undeniable. Air pollution, carbon emissions, and land degradation require serious mitigation. However, framing the debate as a binary choice—immediate exit versus indefinite continuation—oversimplifies a much more complex system.
Roman Bilousov, an investor in the mining industry, emphasizes that the sector itself is evolving. “The mining industry today is becoming increasingly digital, automated, and efficiency-oriented,” he says. Advances in monitoring, methane capture, high-efficiency power plants, and predictive maintenance have reduced emissions per unit of output and increased safety. These improvements don’t solve climate change, but they do bridge the gap during the transition.
The broader strategic question is how to maintain industrial continuity while reducing carbon intensity. This is where financial infrastructure, often ignored in the climate debate, becomes critical.
Commodity markets operate on complex systems of trade finance, currency settlement, and hedging. In recent years, geopolitical fragmentation and sanctions regimes have made cross-border transactions more difficult. Exporters and importers of resources face increasing transaction frictions.
Digital financial instruments can offer part of the solution. Blockchain technology, often associated with speculative cryptocurrencies, has a more pragmatic application in commodity trading. Distributed ledgers can track provenance, verify shipment stages, and record environmental compliance. Smart contracts can automate payment upon confirmation of delivery, reducing delays and counterparty risk.
Stablecoins—digital tokens pegged to fiat currencies—are emerging as tools for cross-border payments. Global stablecoin circulation is expected to exceed $150 billion in 2025, with annual transaction volumes in the trillions. While these instruments are still controversial in regulatory circles, they are increasingly seen as additional payment rails rather than ideological challenges to traditional banking.
Pylyp Travkin sees blockchain implementation in commodity markets as an infrastructure upgrade. “It’s about redundancy and resilience,” he says. “In a fragmented geopolitical environment, additional settlement channels can stabilize trade flows.”
Beyond payments lies a potentially transformative development: tokenization. The market for tokenized real-world assets (RWA) is estimated to have reached $25–30 billion by mid-2025 and continues to grow. While small compared to the global commodity market—estimated at over $130 trillion—tokenized goods are expanding rapidly.
Gold-backed digital tokens dominate this segment, but pilots are emerging in oil, agricultural, and industrial metals. In theory, tokenization could allow mining companies to represent reserves or future production digitally, expanding investor access and shortening settlement cycles. For investors, it offers fractional exposure and programmable compliance. For producers, it could reduce administrative burdens and diversify sources of capital.
Coal itself is not yet widely tokenized, but the underlying infrastructure—transparent registries, automated trading contracts, layers of digital compliance—could change the structure of long-term supply agreements.
Critics will argue that blockchain is an unnecessary complication for a sector that is already under scrutiny. However, digital transparency can be a competitive advantage. ESG-focused investors demand verified environmental performance and supply chain audits. Immutable ledger systems can provide robust reporting mechanisms, potentially reducing financing costs for responsible operators.
None of this suggests that coal will experience a renaissance. Its share in advanced economies is likely to continue to decline. But it will not disappear overnight. Demand for steel remains strong. Developing countries continue to industrialize. The critical minerals needed for electrification are creating new dependencies.
The next decade will not be defined by simple substitution, explains Roman Bilousov. It will be characterized by the coexistence of: reduced carbon intensity, modernized mining, diversified mineral supply chains, and digital overlays that enhance trade resilience.
The energy transition is real and necessary. But it must be done with industrial realism. As Pylyp Travkin argues, the goal is not to protect outdated systems, but to manage the transformation without destabilizing the foundations of global production.
The coal debate must move beyond symbolism. The real challenge is to build a transition that reconciles environmental ambition with economic physics, ensuring that decarbonizing the world does not inadvertently undermine the industrial systems on which modern prosperity depends.
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