Oschadbank and the state-owned energy trader Energy Company of Ukraine (ECU) have signed a memorandum of cooperation to simplify the procedure and improve the conditions for lending to new energy projects in the territorial communities of Ukraine.
As explained in a release from the company on Thursday, the parties have created a joint program to simplify the financing and implementation of energy projects at the community level. According to the memorandum, the company will carry out economic and technical analysis of community-initiated projects that apply for funding. The company will also offer communities market-based tools to improve the economic efficiency and sustainability of such projects, including cooperation within self-production mechanisms, aggregated and balancing groups. The economic models of the projects developed by the ECU will become the basis for the financial assessment of their profitability and payback by Oschadbank when making lending decisions.
“In our experience, one of the barriers to the development of decentralized generation is the lack of relevant competence in the vast majority of small communities. Engaging the specialized expertise of ESU will allow communities to assess the potential for developing their own energy projects, which can not only ensure uninterrupted energy supply or replace it with their own generation, but also bring income to the community budget,” commented Yuriy Katzion, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Oschadbank in charge of corporate business.
He added that Oschad has deep expertise in working with energy projects of any complexity, and its market share in this market is over 31%.
According to Vitaliy Butenko, CEO of ECU, the company is constantly looking for and creating ways to strengthen the market paradigm of ensuring the security of energy supply for communities, and the combination of the deep market expertise of its team with the reliable financial platform of Oschadbank creates the conditions for achieving win-win solutions in one of the most complex but strategically important energy supply sectors.
As reported, in October 2024, CEO Vitaliy Butenko said that the company wants to occupy the niche of a state-owned distributed generation operator (DG) to help utilities and cities with its launch and operation. On December 19, EKU, SIGRE-Ukraine Association and the Association of Small Cities of Ukraine (ASCU) signed a memorandum of cooperation in the development of distributed generation in the regions.
In a blitz interview with Energoreforma in early January 2025, Butenko noted that the company is developing a special unit that will focus on comprehensive support for the development of distributed generation in the regions. According to him, the company will identify a list of joint pilot projects for implementation, which it will be able to scale up to other communities in the country.
In a blitz interview with Energoreforma at the end of February 2025, Yevhen Myachyn, Director of the Corporate Business Development and Support Department of Oschadbank, said that the bank in the corporate business segment for a month and a half of this year has already signed EUR 40 million in loan agreements for energy projects, which is almost as much as for the whole of last year – EUR 45 million, so he sees a clear trend towards an increase in the volume of financing for energy projects.
