On 3 February, the Ukrainian Wind Energy Association (UWEA), together with the European-Ukrainian Energy Agency (EUEA), the Solar Energy Association of
Ukraine (ASEU) and the Ukrainian Association of Renewable Energy (UARE) published an open joint letter to the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, calling for the government to reaffirm legislative guarantees for the development of the renewables industry in the country.
“We would like to stress that the RES [renewable energy sources] sector does not require the government’s financial support or subventions; it simply wants to be paid for the electricity it supplies on the terms provided by the current legislation of Ukraine. RES investors and facility operators all agree that the sector is playing an important role in confronting the energy crisis and desire to contribute to Ukraine’s energy security today and building its energy future,” the joint letter said.
In the letter, the UWEA jointly with other renewable energy industry associations of Ukraine called on the President of Ukraine to reaffirm “the invariance of legislative guarantees” for renewable energy investors and contribute to eliminating the obstacles for RES producers and creating favourable conditions for the industry’s further development.
Breaking down the industry’s points of action
Firstly, the industry urged the government to expedite the adoption of program documents to lay the groundwork for the development of Ukraine’s energy sector and renewable energy (2030 National Renewable Energy Development Action Plan and 2050 Energy Strategy).
Secondly, they highlighted the need to expedite the adoption of the draft law “On Changes to Certain Laws of Ukraine” which extends the terms for the commissioning of renewable energy generation facilities under the power purchase agreements at the feed-in tariff concluded before 31 December 2019.
In terms of RES producers, the letter asked the government to support UWEA’s initiatives on the amendments to the relevant legislation which would enable electricity producers to restore RES facilities as quickly as possible using “state-of-the-art equipment and produce electricity on mutually acceptable terms”.
Moreover, the letter asked for the amendments to the relevant legislation to be expedited in order to implement and support the circulation of guarantees of origin of electricity produced from renewables and, in particular, the adoption of the draft law “On Changes to Certain Laws of Ukraine for Implementation of Registry of Issuance, Use and Revocation of Guarantees of Origin of Electricity Produced from Renewable Energy Sources”.
Highlighting specific industry players, the letter urged the government to “ensure the review and subsequent introduction” of a new tariff for the transmission of electricity to cover all the reasonable needs of Ukrenergo (in particular, those specific to the payment of services aimed at increasing the share of renewable energy generation) in the second quarter of 2023.
In addition, the industry listed the need to expedite settlements with producers of renewable energy for the power supplied at the feed-in tariff and the services specific to reducing loads on the energy system. As part of this, it proposed using the loans provided by EBRD and other lending institutions and to unlock the signing of delivery and acceptance certificates for the July-December 2022 period between Guaranteed Buyer State Enterprise and Ukrenergo regarding the services specific to increasing the share of renewable energy generation.
Lastly, the letter noted the need to expedite the approval of amendments to the formula for calculating the value of RES producer’s imbalance in consideration of the opinion of the Supreme Court of Ukraine from 8 September 2022.
