24.12.2025
For business in the energy sector, there were no classic scenarios for surviving and working under martial law and constant enemy attacks. That is why companies were forced to make decisions that would seem non-standard in peacetime. However, these very decisions allowed them to preserve operational resilience, markets, and teams.
Such experience was discussed at the Energy Club forum “THE ENERGY OF WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP: Women Holding Ukraine’s Energy Frontline,” held on December 10 in Kyiv. During the second panel, “Architects of the Future: Recovery Strategies. Investments, Market Transformation, and Green Transition,” Ganna Pazynych, Director of LLC “Epicentr Generation,” took the floor. She spoke about decisions that became some of the boldest — and at the same time most effective — for the company.
Ganna Pazynych admitted that the speeches of the forum speakers became a source of inspiration for her and pushed her to a personal conclusion about the nature of female leadership: “What is female strength and leadership? It is that we are not afraid to talk about our mistakes, to admit that we need support. We are not afraid to be authentic, to show our emotions. And this is exactly what makes us stronger, gives us the resource to move forward and take on complex projects.”
She thanked the Energy Club for organizing the forum and expressed hope that such events would happen regularly – not only as a space for exchanging experience among women but also as a tool for promoting the energy sector, which remains a rather closed industry for objective reasons. “I have been in energy for a little over a year, but I already know for sure: this is an extremely interesting sphere. And I sincerely recommend it to young people who are choosing their future profession today,” noted Ganna Pazynych.
According to the speaker, modern energy has long gone beyond the traditional consumer perception: “Energy is not just current from a socket. It is cybersecurity, smart grids, and combining different types of generation. Five years ago, we could not even imagine that, having powerful nuclear and hydro generation, we would be forced to model completely new formats of electricity production.”
Ganna drew a historical parallel with the periods of post-war reconstruction of the 20th century, when women took on colossal responsibility for restoring the economy while remaining “invisible.” “History repeats itself. Today we again have to take the courage and responsibility to rebuild the country — particularly the energy sector, which suffered almost the most,” she emphasized.
For most Ukrainians, “Epicentr” is associated primarily with shopping centers. However, according to Ganna Pazynych, energy has long ceased to be a sideline for the group of companies: “I myself was recently an ordinary consumer and never thought about energy as a business. Today I want to dispel the myth: for ‘Epicentr,’ energy is not an additional business, but a question of survival and autonomy, an opportunity to open doors for our customers every day.”
LLC “Epicentr K,” one of the leaders of Ukrainian retail and a strategic investor in the country’s economy, joined the Energy Club business community in 2025. Founded in 2003, the group of companies is a multi-profile ecosystem uniting retail, agro-industry, production, logistics, and energy, demonstrating stable growth and constantly investing in the modernization of its own capacities.
Active development of the energy direction in the group began in 2023 — against the backdrop of rapidly rising electricity prices and tariffs. The first step was the construction of rooftop solar power plants (SPPs). To date, the company has already built 10 SPPs and continues to scale up.
However, considering the electricity surplus in summer hours, “Epicentr” is paying increasing attention to energy storage systems. In 2024, after the first large-scale blackouts, the group of companies bet on distributed generation – gas reciprocating units, which allow working both in connection with the grid and in island mode. “Our main challenge today is to synchronize all energy solutions with each other: sun, gas reciprocating generation, storage systems. Only in this way can maximum efficiency be achieved,” emphasized Ganna Pazynych.
The strategic goal of the company is to achieve maximum autonomy for shopping centers and production facilities. At the same time, the Director of LLC “Epicentr Generation” stressed, this is also a real contribution to strengthening the national energy system: “Decentralization, which the state talked about even before the war, takes on practical meaning today. Small but powerful players can significantly strengthen the system’s stability.”
In the future, the company plans to gradually enter the market with the sale of surplus electricity — both to open market segments and for related enterprises.
The moderator of the second panel, Kateryna Ivanus, founder of the Kateryna Ivanus PR & Media Consulting agency, noted the scale and strategic nature of the company’s approach: “Epicentr is an example of how creating one’s own energy capacity for survival during the war scales over time and can turn into a separate, powerful business direction. This is an important benchmark for the entire Ukrainian energy sector.”
