Ukraine’s leaders do not yet know when Russia’s war will end. But they do know that peace will bring the need to build back greener. Their work on making a more sustainable future – even in wartime, against the odds – is a testament to their resilience. That, coupled with the country’s renewable resource, makes this a quest to support.
Ukraine’s geographical and climatic conditions make it suitable for solar and wind energy development on a large scale. Green development was already a priority before the war began, with pre-war achievements including the development of renewables and no less than seven Ukrainian cities signing up – a record – for the urban sustainability programme of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the country’s biggest institutional investor.
In the early months of the full-scale war, when European gas prices rose sharply, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed hopes Ukraine could become a green energy hub for Europe. He said clean, green Ukrainian electric energy could replace Russian gas on European markets. In the summer of 2022, Ukraine was even preparing to export electricity into the European energy system, which it had moved to that spring as Russian troops rolled in.
Then the war took a new and deadly turn. From autumn 2022, Russia targeted Ukraine’s electricity transmission system. Attacks on substations plunged 10 million people into darkness in October. The objective was clear: to break the backbone of Ukraine’s national grid and weaken the economy far from the frontlines.
In 2024, Russia raised the stakes again, shifting the focus of its air attacks to Ukraine’s generation system and taking out power stations directly. By the middle of 2024, around half of the country’s generation capacity, and almost all thermal power, was lost. Rapid repairs have alternated with new waves of attacks.
However, the energy system has so far held up, thanks to the strengthening of defences around strategic facilities, the decentralisation of the energy system with the development of small stand-alone energy capacities, emergency repairs, a relatively warm winter and the ability to import electricity from the EU.
Russia’s targeted attacks have only reinforced Ukraine’s conviction that the best and most secure form of energy for a successful future should be green, locally produced and decentralised.
So, even in wartime, while defence remains Ukraine’s top priority, the country is shifting toward a sustainable, low-carbon economy. The national energy strategy aims to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, including by increasing the share of renewable energy in power generation to 50 percent by 2035.
Energy support
The EBRD, which identified supporting Ukraine’s energy sector as a priority at the very start of the war, has worked on all Ukraine’s evolving energy needs. Of more than €8 billion we have made available to Ukraine in wartime, €3 billion has gone on energy. This has given us a close-up view of Ukrainians’ determination to realise this ambition.
At the start, our support for the energy sector was not about long-term strategy, but just about survival. Our first steps in 2022 involved providing emergency liquidity to electricity and gas companies to help them keep afloat, and business able to operate normally, at a time of huge uncertainty. The fear was that population movements meant utility bills might go unpaid and the companies’ finances unravel.
As the war has developed, however, our initial emergency plan has evolved into a far-reaching programme of investment to support Ukraine’s bigger plan of reshaping its energy future.
We responded to Russian attacks on the transmission system by providing emergency financing to repair Ukrenergo’s damaged substations and autotransformers. Since repairs alone were not enough, we also financed the construction of breezeblock bunkers around substations to shield them from drones and missiles – 43 autotransformers and protective structures at 34 substations, so far, serving around one-third of Ukraine’s electricity consumers.
Vitalii Zaichenko, CEO of electricity transmission system operator Ukrenergo, has described this support as “absolutely vital” for millions of families through the worst of winter.
When Russia targeted power stations, our response was to support distributed power – small-scale, flexible gas-fired generators that can be deployed quickly, supplying emergency electricity close to where it was needed most. Our first projects will provide heat for 37,000 households and electricity for around 312,000 homes and offices.
These units are dual-use. In wartime, they provide emergency electricity. In peacetime, they will balance Ukraine’s increasingly renewable-based energy mix by providing back-up when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine.
This means they will support the renewables projects we are also already working on with Ukrainian and international partners.
So far, we are helping upgrade hydropower plants (a €200 million loan to Ukrhydroenergo), working with Germany’s Goldbeck Solar to develop a 500MW pipeline of solar projects, and supporting biofuel and wind projects with OKKO Group, a Ukrainian energy entity. The wind project alone will bring electricity to nearly 100,000 homes.
We’re also working on a derisking programme with international partners, which should accelerate renewable investment even further. This is because we see how important it is to help Ukraine to create the building blocks of a more secure, flexible and sustainable energy system to prepare for reconstruction.
With the war still going on, Ukraine is currently preparing for another hard winter. But international support on energy, including that of the EBRD, is not only helping position the country for a peacetime future of greater energy security but also one of renewable energy leadership.
As President Zelenskyy pointed out early in the war, his country has the potential to become a European renewables powerhouse. It is already showing how hard it is prepared to work to get there.
Arvid Tuerkner is managing director for Ukraine and Moldova at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD)
