Long nights without electricity: Ukraine enters winter with broken power grid – Reuters

“A lot (of effort) went into just repairing what was destroyed. And have we managed to create additional resilience? Are we in a better position than last winter? I don’t think so. It was a great effort, it was successful, but it needs to be continued,” said Markus Lippold, Head of the Energy Group at the European Union’s Enlargement Division.

In June, the United Nations estimated that Ukraine’s electricity generation capacity had been reduced to about half of its pre-Russian invasion level. Of the nearly 37 gigawatts (GW), more than 19 GW was destroyed or damaged. The Kyiv School of Economics estimated the direct damage to Ukraine’s energy infrastructure at $8.8 billion as of June.

Ukraine has also stockpiled enough gas to get through the winter without imports for the first time since independence in 1991, Naftogaz CEO Oleksiy Chernyshov tells Reuters.

Among other measures to strengthen Ukraine’s energy resilience, the government has taken the first steps toward decentralizing the energy sector.

In addition, some businesses and cities have begun to build up their own capacity by turning to small-scale renewable energy sources where possible and installing generators. Ukrainian companies and individuals have imported tens of thousands of generators, although some Russian attacks on oil depots threaten the supply of fuel to power them.