Addressing the Needs of clean Energy transition Willingness of UKRAINIAN cities Leveraging Innovative Financing Examples and measures

ongoing

Since the beginning of 2022, Ukraine has entered an unstable period characterized by the mobilization of the national army and by the defense of its own territories. This military crisis has led to a series of consequences: significant human losses, a lack of primary resources, and difficulties in ensuring basic services. Among these, the country's energy infrastructure has suffered considerable damages, resulting in service disruptions and interruptions for the population. Consequently, restoring clean energy services and prioritizing the reconstruction process have become pivotal. For this reason, efficient building design, cleaner power/heating systems, and more reliable energy infrastructure have become increasingly important in shaping Ukraine's strategic role in the overall EU energy scenario. With these premises, the ANEW-LIFE project aims to define guidelines and to establish a favorable context for initiating and promoting green energy initiatives at municipality level in the whole country. At this regard, ANEW-LIFE brings together experience from clean energy (EnGreen, Blue Energy Revolution, 5thVOLT, Climate Alliance) and financing sectors (Anternative Financing IFN, Enersave Capital) to support Ukrainian cities in developing and deploying their own energy strategies and plans. This will be done thanks to the involvement of groups of citizens, local institutions, and NGOs (DIXI, Ecoclub) already active in the energy sector, but also thanks to a dense capacity building campaign (BER) and by identifying most appropriate financing mechanisms for financing energy interventions (i.e. green bonds, donorship, private/public partnerships, crowdfunding, energy communities…). The proposed bottom-up approach to be implemented at municipality level will be validated in 3 lighthouse cities (Zhytomir, Kalush, Nyzhin) targeting also a wider replication campaign in further 10 Ukrainian cities (4 of them who signed letters of support) and 10 other EU cities. Municipalities feedback will be crucial to develop a catalogue of clean energy solutions coupled with appropriate financing measures to be promoted in Ukraine and Europe, to foster policies/incentives/investments. The stakeholders project community will have a central importance and it will include cities representatives, financing institutions/ethical banks, policy makers, international cooperation actors, brought together having the common objective of validating and promoting ANEW-LIFE project results.