How will energy change in 2025?

On 20 March 2025, UN Global Compact Ukraine together with EXPRO Electricity initiated and held a panel expert discussion on the topic: Integration of RES into Ukraine’s Energy System: Challenges and Opportunities.

After russia’s destructive attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, renewable energy sources (RES) have become crucial for ensuring the state energy security and sustainable development. These words were the starting point for the discussion. Leading industry experts, representatives of private business and government agencies, and legal professionals presented their visions on the prospects for Ukraine’s energy transformation.

Eco-Optima Group was represented by Yurii Fedak, Deputy Director of Development.

“Given the situation, everyone came to the understanding that the legacy system of centralised generation cannot be a reliable power source amid the war. The key element of the new strategy for the power system development should be the decentralised, distributed and highly flexible generation. Such as PV power plants and wind farms in conjunction with energy storage systems, as well as gas piston power plants. Eco-Optima actively moves in this direction: we have launched a 54.6 MW wind farm, started construction of the Sokal wind farm with a capacity of 40 MW, and next year we plan to build another wind farm of 100 MW. We are also working on deploying energy storage systems, and highly flexible gas piston generation with a total capacity of 24 MW, which is scheduled to fully go live by September this year. We have plans to build a 100 MW plant for green hydrogen electrolysis and subsequent export by the existing gas pipeline,” Yurii Fedak summarised.

Yurii Fedak also highlighted the challenges:

-    mechanisms of raising funds for large projects, in particular from Ukrainian banks;

-    development and approval of feasibility study – to make it more simple with maximum transparency;

-    shortcomings of the current TNC in terms of introducing gas piston plants – activation time is 30 seconds (on the market, no GPP producer can meet this condition today);

-    development of TSO networks, which is essential for us in the Western region.

Eco-Optima Group thanks the organisers and speakers of the panel discussion for their commitment to resolving the strategic problems of our country.