The Ministry for Communities and Territories Development and Infrastructure of Ukraine and the USAID Energy Security Project (ESP) signed a memorandum of understanding aimed at restoring, reforming and developing the energy and municipal infrastructure of communities, ensuring energy sustainability, the press service of the Ministry of Restoration reports.

“Reforming the energy sector in accordance with EU best practices, optimizing Ukraine’s municipal heating system, promoting the large-scale implementation of decentralized energy supply, integrating various sources of renewable energy, and increasing energy efficiency will contribute to the decarbonization of the energy system and increase energy security. I am grateful to our American partners for their willingness to help Ukraine in ways to transform and modernize our energy system,” noted Deputy Ministry of Restoration Oleksandr Butenko.

USAID, through the Energy Security Project, will support the ministry in reforming the district heating and power sector. It will contribute to improving energy sustainability by prioritizing energy infrastructure project concepts at the municipal level aimed at economically feasible and financially sustainable distributed energy generation with integrated cogeneration, promoting the deployment of various energy sources. An important element is to promote the development of cogeneration, which will reduce the number of potential power outages in emergency situations. This will also ensure a constant supply of energy to critical infrastructure facilities in communities.

In order to strengthen the resilience of heating infrastructure and ensure the supply of energy to critical infrastructure in local communities, we will focus on supporting a range of investment projects for distributed generation using various energy sources and developing the technical capacity of local authorities and sector stakeholders, in addition to special attention, which we will devote to the development of regulatory documents on distributed generation in district heating systems, said Michael Trainor, head of the USAID Energy Security Project.

The memorandum provides for both cooperation to meet priority needs and assistance in strategic planning for the restoration and reform of energy and heat supply.