Ukraine’s energy giant DTEK and Danish company Vestas, the world’s leading wind turbine producer, will build a wind farm in the Tylihul estuary in Mykolaiv Oblast, 460 kilometers south of Kyiv.
The so-called Tiligulska wind power plant will start operating in 2022 with an initial capacity of 126 megawatts, DTEK Renewables, the conglomerate’s green energy business, reported on March 1.
Vestas will supply 21 wind turbines for the project.
DTEK, which belongs to Ukraine’s richest oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, will use its 325 million euros in proceeds from the sale of its green bonds issued in 2019.
Upon completion, the 180-meter turbines will become the tallest structures built after the country’s independence, even taller than the famous Duga radar in Chornobyl.
Green tariff cuts and the government’s $1-billion debt to producers of green energy have deterred many investors in Ukraine’s renewables in 2020 but not DTEK — it continues to invest heavily in green power, aiming to become carbon neutral by 2040.
According to Maris Kunitskis, CEO of DTEK Renewables, the company expects a stable policy from the government regarding green energy.
“We expect that the crisis… will be resolved soon and the state policy regarding renewable energy will become understandable and predictable,” Kunitskis wrote in the company’s press release.
The Ukrainian government is obliged to buy all the green energy produced in the country at a fixed, euro-denominated rate. In 2020, during the coronavirus crisis, it could afford to fully pay only for about 50% of the green power.
The construction of a new wind power plant is a positive sign, renewable energy expert Yuri Kubrushko told the Kyiv Post on March 2. “At the same time, the government tries to respect its commitments, so it’s a work in progress,” he said, “but we are still far from the solution.”
Becoming carbon neutral would require a major transformation for DTEK, which controls the majority of coal-fired electricity production in Ukraine and employs tens of thousands of miners.
In 2020, coal and combined-cycle power plants generated about a third of Ukraine’s total energy, while renewable energy sources, including wind and solar power and excluding hydropower, secured 8.1% of the total electricity generated in Ukraine, according to the Energy Ministry.
Ukraine’s goal is to produce 25% of its energy from renewable sources by 2035.
