11.05.2026
During the Energy Club forum “Distributed Cogeneration — 2026: Barriers to Energy Resilience and Urban Survival,” which took place in Kyiv on April 28, UKRTEPLO Executive Director Roman Shved candidly outlined the crisis facing Ukrainian cogeneration during the war. According to him, the problem is no longer just enemy attacks, but the instability of the energy system itself: due to voltage surges, cogeneration units suffer mass emergency shutdowns multiple times a day, damaging expensive equipment, reducing its lifespan, and creating imbalances for producers.
Roman Shved emphasized that after massive attacks, the situation becomes predictably critical: plants may shut down three to four times within a few hours. Consequently, companies are already forced to consider completely shutting down generation during attack periods to preserve machinery. At the same time, he warned: another year or two of operating under such conditions, and a significant portion of cogeneration machines will simply reach the end of their lifespan.
The UKRTEPLO Executive Director paid special attention to the issue of alternative fuels. He explained that despite the active development of biogas and biomass projects, electricity production from solid fuel or biomass for small-scale facilities is currently almost economically unviable. According to him, small plants of 5–10 MW have nearly the same complexity and capital intensity as large power plants of hundreds of megawatts, but they do not yield the corresponding economic returns. Additionally, large facilities remain direct military targets.
Meanwhile, the speaker emphasized that heat from biofuels remains an effective solution. Specifically, in Rivne, the company has already installed 40 MW of biomass capacity, which allows for a significant reduction in the consumption of scarce gas and increases the resilience of the heat supply.
Speaking about the industry’s systemic crisis, Roman Shved pinpointed its root cause — frozen heat tariffs. According to him, district heating companies (TKE) have worked for years in a model where the population pays only a fraction of the real cost of heat, with the state supposed to compensate for the rest. However, these compensations accumulate as debts that banks do not recognize as income, while Naftogaz collects arrears and penalties through the courts. As a result, most TKEs find themselves caught between billions in debt, seized accounts, and the inability to properly prepare for the new heating season.
In Shved’s opinion, it is precisely because of this system that the market avoids cogeneration and moves toward a simpler, low-efficiency electricity generation model where heat is simply vented into the atmosphere. This means losing expensive gas, which is scarce during the war, and an overall decrease in the country’s energy efficiency.
Separately, he drew attention to the problem of energy waste. According to him, artificially low tariffs for years failed to incentivize the population toward energy efficiency and home insulation. At the same time, the transition to market tariffs, the UKRTEPLO Executive Director is convinced, must happen gradually — with the monetization of subsidies, support programs, and comprehensive energy-efficient solutions.
Closing his speech, Roman Shved stressed: without solving the tariff-setting problem, Ukraine will continue to lose gas, resources, and the potential of distributed generation. In wartime conditions, this is no longer just a matter of economics, but of the country’s energy survival.
