The business community and the government are much better prepared for the upcoming winter of 2026/2027 than they were for the last one, so this winter promises to be easier, according to Serhiy Shakalov, CEO and co-owner of KNESS Group, a company operating in the renewable energy sector.
"I'm confident that this winter will be better than the last one. I'm confident that the business sector has prepared much better than it did last year. I know that the government has also prepared much better. Not everything, of course, depends on us or the government. A lot depends on the actions – excuse me – of our neighbor. But I'm much more optimistic now than I was at this time last year," Shakalov said during the Forbes Ukraine Economic Resilience Forum on Wednesday, according to an Interfax-Ukraine correspondent reporting from the scene.
According to him, very few of the group's clients are companies that have not taken some measures to ensure their own energy independence.
"We have very few companies that have done nothing in terms of their own consumption, building their own generation capacity, or their own grid. That's why I'm quite optimistic about the coming winter," Shakalov said.
He said the availability of electricity to businesses is a much more important issue than its availability in the general grid.
"From the perspective of this paradigm, businesses are doing a great job. A great many companies have taken care of themselves. And that's the right direction," the co-owner of KNESS Group said.
As previously reported, as of March 2025, KNESS Group had commissioned 1.3 GW of solar power plants in Ukraine, Poland, and Latvia, and another 1.48 GW of power generation facilities are under its comprehensive management.
In 2023, KNESS Group received Ukraine's first license to conduct business in the field of energy storage. In 2025, the company commissioned 100 MW of energy storage systems (ESS), with plans for approximately 200 MW in 2026.
