Ukrenergo CEO: Ukrainian energy sector offers investors low costs and fast permitting
Kyiv • UNN
Ukraine offers lucrative opportunities for energy investors due to reduced bureaucracy, lower costs, and quicker permitting for new projects such as high-voltage lines, wind and solar power plants, transforming it from an aid recipient to a potential exporter feeding European power grids.
While Russia has been trying to destroy the Ukrainian energy sector, foreign investors in Ukraine are seeing lucrative offers: reduced bureaucratic procedures, lower costs in many areas, and access to the Ukrainian electricity market.
Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, chairman of the board of Ukrenergo, told Politico, UNN reports .
In these conditions, the Ukrainian energy sector offers very, very profitable options. Investors should get in now
According to him, Ukraine has the opportunity to build a 100-kilometer high-voltage line that will be ready in one or two years, but in Eastern Europe such a project often takes 5-10 years; in Western Europe, it takes even longer.
Delays in launching new energy projects have long been a problem for companies in Western Europe. Kudrycki said it can take only a few weeks to get a new wind or solar project approved, while in Italy it usually takes nine years.
Kudrytsky noted that Ukraine pays twice as much as many other European countries for services that help connect the grid, "so your income as an investor will be twice as much." At the same time, Kudrytsky added, "your labor and land costs can be five, seven, 10 times less.
Ukraine currently exports about 1 million euros worth of electricity a day, but there is an ambitious plan to increase this figure by at least seven times. This would transform Ukraine from a country that needs energy aid to a country that feeds Europe's power grids and would become an investment opportunity for the private sector, says the chairman of the board of Ukrenergo.
Recall
UNN reported that in early March, Ukraine planned to export a record 13,264 MWh of electricity to 5 countries, while imports are planned at 132 MWh, and Ukraine's electricity production is sufficient to meet demand without an expected shortfall.
The situation in Ukraine's hydropower sector is stable. [HPPs and PSPs are operating normally, and repairs are underway at 23 hydroelectric units, including 9 undergoing reconstruction.
