War accelerates green energy shift in Ukraine: CEO
The Russian invasion forces Ukraine to accelerate its transition to green energy as a way to protect its electricity supply and infrastructure against attacks, said the head of the largest private electricity supplier of Ukraine.
“Building wind farms or solar parks is not just about making carbon -free. It is also about energy security and resilience, “Maxim Timchenko, CEO of DTEK, told AFP on the World Economic Forum on Wednesday.
“It is much more difficult to touch and switch these power stations than thermal or hydroelectric power stations,” he said.
Russia repeatedly attacked the Ukrainian energy system as part of the almost three -year war against his neighboring country.
At the meeting in Davos, Timchenko announced what he called the largest private investment in Ukraine since Moscow launched his invasion in 2022: a deal of 450 million euros ($ 468 million) to buy 64 wind turbines from Danish Vestas.
The turbines will expand the Tyligulska-Windpark of DTEK on the coast of the Black Sea.
Turbines also offer the advantage that they come online quickly and gradually as soon as they are installed, with some new ones from Vestas already deliver electricity this year.
“I hope that with this program we will add 60 megawatts of capacity before the next winter,” whereby the full capacity of 500 megawatts in Tyligulska will be reached at the end of 2026.
That would be enough to provide around 900,000 homes, he said.
– ‘more resilient’ –
The project underlines Ukraine’s aim to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels and nuclear energy to exploit large power stations for an extensive electricity grid, both of which are particularly vulnerable to Russian air strikes.
The infrastructure of the country has often been the target and paralyzed, which has led to power failure or emergency voltage reductions – the so -called ‘brownouts’ – which are especially painful in the winter.
“This transition from a very centralized, very vulnerable energy system to a clean, decentralized, resilient and new technological system … This transition is accelerated by the war,” said Timchenko.
Two weeks ago, DTEK also announced an agreement with the German-American group Fluence for the construction of what Timchenko called the first battery storage project on an industrial scale in Ukraine.
That project is planned for October and the company is in conversation with potential partners for two other wind farms.
The hope is that smaller locations for renewable energy spread throughout the country will reduce the vulnerability of the system and emissions.
And with an attack, all turbines of a wind farm should be destroyed to completely switch it off.
Wind and solar energy currently generate 10 percent of Ukrainian needs and coal or gas plants produce 20 percent, with nuclear power stations with 55 percent the most important supplier.
“These investments make us more resilient. We are much more confident that the Russians will not destroy this new power plant to the extent that they can do it with thermal,” said Tyligulska about the expansion of Tyligulska.
“In principle, all our power plants were attacked several times in 2024,” he noted, whereby substations and transmission lines were also the target.
Nevertheless, he said that DTEK has succeeded in recovering a large part of the lost capacity, and that 50 to 60 percent is currently operational.
“Taking into account the fact that we have had a decrease in consumption since the start of the war, this capacity, together with the support of electricity imports, is sufficient to prevent any power outages,” said Timchenko.
SOE/JS/JM
