Ukraine is facing the urgent need to fundamentally change its attitude to energy conservation policies, which should be founded exclusively on an economic basis. The recent gas war, whether lost or won, has only made this problem more acute. The major principle to follow here is that we must invest funds in projects that are profitable and self-sustaining.
The old system has exhausted itself, and no European country today has such energy-intensive industrial and private sectors as Ukraine. Gas prices pose the biggest problem for the public utilities sector. The reason is well known: in multi-family houses two-thirds of all energy is wasted. In fact, heating plants are not heating buildings so much as the soil and the air. Back in 1999 I proposed a project for Vinnytsia, which could significantly improve the situation. The project boiled down to building rooftop boilers to which several multistory buildings could be connected. This approach would make it possible to cut gas consumption by 66%, as it rules out loss of heat on the way to consumers.
I see this as a top priority measure for resolving the energy problem in the public utilities sector. Given the continuing technological progress, today’s boilers are much more efficient than six years ago, which is why the impact of this approach would be even greater today. If a private company builds a rooftop boiler, its payback period will be just three or four years even if gas prices go up (on condition that consumers make timely payments for gas at the rates established by the government). At the same time, the quality of service will increase significantly. Consequently, this approach has a big future, which is why it is being utilized in all new housing projects.
The government’s project to install plastic windows is praiseworthy. After all, it takes six to eight times less energy to heat one square meter in a building with externally foam-insulated walls and plastic windows than in an ordinary building. This task is up to the government because state utilities will never do this.
As for alternative energy sources, unfortunately, Ukraine is still at square one even though it has a great potential in terms of know-how and resources. For example, Austria, Germany, and many other European nations effectively use wind power plants to generate energy. Ukraine has ample space to build such plants and use them effectively. However, such a project would require appropriate government funding. Our water resources potential has not been fully utilized either. We cannot continue the current practice of burning tremendous amounts of coal to produce electricity and heat.
Of course, this is a global problem and requires both government funding and private investments. I once spoke to Minister Baranivsky of the Agro-industrial Complex, who said that since fuel prices have gone up, it is now economically feasible to manufacture diesel fuel from rapeseed. Poland has built such plants, and Ukrainian farmers are successfully supplying them with raw materials. Therefore, we simply must find investors to build plants of our own to produce diesel fuel from rapeseed in an environmentally friendly way. Some 60% of agricultural lands in Vinnytsia oblast are overgrown with weeds. Meanwhile, growing rapeseed on these lands would benefit both the industrial and agrarian sectors.
