According to preliminary forecasts, in mid-October 2022, the Energy Efficiency Fund will launch a pilot grant program, which will provide grants to the HOAs on a free and irrevocable basis in the amount of 100% of the cost of materials and works for primary repairs in buildings damaged by military actions. The European Union has agreed to allocate EUR 5 million for the implementation of this pilot project. This was announced by Yehor Fareniuk, CEO of the Energy Efficiency Fund, during the panel session on the topic ‘Energy efficiency and recovery’, which took place on September 30, 2022 during the online event ‘The Cities Energy Saving Sprint today - more energy efficiency and green energy in the future’, organized by the EU Project ‘Agreement of Mayors - East’ as part of the European Sustainable Energy Week in Ukraine 2022.

‘The idea of expanding the scope of the Fund’s activities, in particular, to launch a new program aimed at repairing houses damaged by military actions, we have begun to implement this program since April of this year and thanks to the support of the EU, our international partners, donors and the Ministry of Community and Territorial Development, now the launch of this Program at the final straight. This will be a full grant program, which will cover Kyiv, Zhytomyr, Chernihiv and Sumy regions.

For the first pilot project, we plan to support at least 60 houses in which the HOAs are established. And since we do not have a lot of funds for the implementation of this program, we plan to first give one house not more than UAH 6 million’, - said Mr. Ehor Fareniuk.

At the same time, the CEO of the Fund thanked the European Union for its support and expressed the hope that in 2023 funding for the implementation of this program will be increased. At present, the need for funds to increase the number of houses – participants of this program (to 1000 houses) is approximately UAH 3 billion or EUR 75 million.

‘Our goal is to continue supporting co-owners of multi-apartment buildings, both in the process of energy modernization of houses and in the process of renovation of war-damaged houses. Energy efficiency is the best mechanism for reducing energy consumption and CO2 emissions. And this is the key mission of the Energy Efficiency Fund. High parameters of energy efficiency are one of the main parameters that should provide high-quality reconstruction’, - said Mr. Ehor Fareniuk. He emphasized that in August 2022 the international agreements were signed, according to which the EE4U and EE4U-II Energy Efficiency Support Programs are extended for another three years. That is, financing of the Fund's programs by donors will continue.

As well, Mr. Ehor Fareniuk informed the participants that despite the war, the Fund continues to fulfill its obligations under the ‘ENERGODIM’ Program and to provide support to the HOAs, which applied for participation in the Program before the war.

‘Today we have 215 fully or partially completed energy-efficient projects under the ‘ENERGODIM’ Program, 58 HOAs completed their projects during the war period and during this period the Fund has compensated for UAH 376,3 million. Also, at present we have received 196 verification applications for compensation of partially or fully executed works and acceptance and processing of new applications for project approval, changes to the project, verification and extension of the project implementation period’, - said Ehor Fareniuk.

Chloe Alio, the Head of the Energy, Transport and Environment Department of the EU- Representation in Ukraine, during his speech, noted that the EU-Representation in Ukraine, despite the war, considers it very important to develop energy efficiency in Ukraine and emphasized that the EU continues close cooperation with the Energy Efficiency Fund, in particular in housing reconstruction, damaged as a result of military operations.

Dmytro Petrunin, the Director General of the Directorate of Energy Efficiency of the Ministry of Community and Territorial Development, said that one of the priority plans of the Ministry for the near future is expansion of activities of the Energy Efficiency Fund.

‘In the Ministry of Community and Territorial Development, in accordance with the established procedure, the necessary legal and regulatory acts have already been worked out and submitted to the Government for consideration, which are necessary for the launch of the new program of the Fund for renovation of the housing fund damaged as a result of military actions. It is expected that soon these acts will be approved and the Fund will be able to implement the relevant measures in cooperation with the European Union and IFC’, - Dmytro Petrunin added.

In addition, he said that three state-wide target programs have been developed so far, one of which involves the implementation of measures for the thermal modernization of social sector buildings and housing stock of all forms of ownership. It is assumed that the Energy Efficiency Fund will deal with the implementation of measures in the part of buildings in which HOAs have been created, but will not be limited to this.

Besides, the participants of the event were Oksana Remiga (the Representative of the European Investment Bank), Oleksiy Korchmit (the Head of the Ukrainian ESCO-Association) and Borys Small (the Director of the Department of Economic Policy of the Lutsk City Council).

From the team of the ‘Agreement of Mayors - East’  EU project the event was moderated by national experts - Maxim Vereshchak, Vitaly Volkov and Oksana Kisil.

You can view the video of the event on the Covenant of Mayors – East web page and on Facebook page at https://fb.watch/fVwvdHYT-k/