As soon as When the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, Yuliana Onishchuk knew she had to help her country. News coverage of the initial occupation of the kyiv region showed that the town of Irpin and Bucha, on the outskirts of the capital, had suffered enormous damage, and Onishchuk was clear that critical infrastructure would need to be repaired. “I saw the schools and was sure we would have to rebuild them,” Onishchuk says. She saw an opportunity. “I realized: we have to rebuild them in a new way.”
Drawing on her experience as an energy lawyer and solar energy project manager, Onishchuk created an NGO, the Energy Law Foundation for Ukraine. “I was already in the renewable energy sector and I love renewable energy.” The foundation would help rebuild schools and hospitals and equip them with solar panels, giving them energy independence while helping Ukrainians understand the importance of clean energy.
Then, in October 2022, Russia began attacking Ukraine’s energy system. Very quickly half of the country’s network was damaged. In 2023, attacks shifted from attacking just the grid to targeting energy production. Millions of Ukrainians faced widespread blackouts during the frigid winter months of 2023.
With the country mired in energy poverty, designing energy-independent schools and hospitals was not just a smart step on the path to the green transition: it was a vital solution to keep them running during the invasion. Therefore, the foundation’s mission is now twofold: to rebuild Ukraine with both sustainability and energy security in mind.
Before speaking in WIRED and Octopus Energy Technology Summit In Berlin on October 10, Yuliana sat down with WIRED to talk about the foundation’s work. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
WIRED: How badly has the Russian invasion affected Ukraine’s energy supply?
Yuliana Onishchuk: Before the war, 55 percent of Ukraine’s generation was nuclear, and one of the largest nuclear power plants, supplying more than half of that nuclear energy, was Zaporizhzhia. Now he’s busy.
Again, before the invasion, 35 percent of power generation came from thermal power plants, which became a particular focus for Russia this year. They realized that this supply was exactly what they should attack, because that 35 percent can hardly be protected, and it is not as dangerous to attack it as nuclear.
We lost 80 percent of wind energy because almost all wind turbines are located in the south. The south is mostly occupied. Solar farms located in the east and south were attacked or robbed: solar panels were dismantled and stolen.
So we lost a lot. Russia has destroyed 50 percent of our electricity generating capacity.
This must make life incredibly difficult for people.
With the Zaporizhzhia plant occupied, over the past two years we have repaired additional generating units at other nuclear plants, as not all units were on when the war started. We could not live without the 55 percent of our energy generation that comes from nuclear energy; It is a huge amount. Now, as far as I know, all units of all plants are operating in Ukraine.
Yuliana Onishchuk.Photo courtesy of the Energy Law Foundation for Ukraine
That has helped us get out of the blackouts that occurred in May, June and July of this year. For almost three months we suffered very long blackouts, up to 12 hours. Right now, we don’t have many major outages; Only the settlements, villages and cities that are in the frontline areas suffer from blackouts all the time.
But we still have a percentage of the rest of the population suffering from blackouts because generation units, whether renewable or thermal, are being attacked, along with distribution networks. During the last three months, absolutely every city in the country suffered a blackout.