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yesterday, he said: “We see in the Azov region a great sanatorium-resort potential, health-improving potential.”
9.1.9 Utilities sector news
2020 was also the first full year of the new electricity market that was launched in July 2019 to make the sector more competitive. The state lifted the state enterprise Energorynok’s monopoly. The company used to buy energy from producers and sell it to regional electricity distributors. Customers can now choose energy providers on their own — up to a point. Ukraine’s energy grid is still more Soviet than European, making the formation of a genuinely competitive market impossible. Oleksandr Kharchenko, director of the Energy Investigation Center, told the Kyiv Post in July 2020 that it can hardly be called a “market” since its segments are either under- or over-regulated. Volodymyr Omelchenko, head of energy programs at the Razumkov Center, also described the new market as inefficient. “2020 has shown that the introduced model of electricity (market) is completely inefficient, harmful and leads to the accumulation of huge debts,” he said.
In total, Ukrainian companies produced 148.8 billion kilowatt-hour of electricity in 2020, which is 3.3% lower than in 2019.
Nuclear power predominates, producing over half of Ukraine’s electricity. Coal-fired power plants — mainly controlled by DTEK, which belongs to Ukraine’s richest man, oligarch Rinat Akhmetov — come second.
Renewable energy developers produced 7.3% of the total volume. The biggest share of the market belongs to DTEK Renewables, which is also owned by Akhmetov.
Ukrainian energy state-run companies struggled with losses and debts in 2020. Ukrenergo, for instance, lost nearly $1 billion last year, while Energoatom reported $175 million in losses. Energorynok’s losses, in turn, reached nearly $100 million.
Annual power generation in Ukraine is estimated to fall by more than 22.8 TWh in the next decade from a total of circa 127.3 TWh in 2020, due to the poor state of the economy and shrinking population data, analytics company GlobalData said in a report on May 31.
Pavan Vyakaranam, practice head at GlobalData, commented: “Electricity consumption in Ukraine witnessed downward trend in the last decade mainly due to [a] decline in industrial output. Industrial output during 2015-2020 was on a constant decline in the country, leading to a slowdown in electricity demand from the industrial sector, resulting in total electricity consumption reach[ing] 127.3 TWh in 2020 from 139.8 TWh in 2011.”
Vyakaranam continues: “Over the next decade, demand is expected to decline to 92.7 TWh by 2030, due to a myriad of factors. One of the most prominent is its declining population. During 2020-2030, population declined at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 0.6%. Slowdown in the commercial and industrial sectors will continue to impact demand in future.”
62 UKRAINE Country Report July 2021 www.intellinews.com