This story was produced by Grist and co-published with The Kyiv Independent.
On a bright spring day earlier this year, a small group of 10 men stood quietly on the rooftop of a door manufacturing facility located in the central Ukrainian town of Bila Tserkva. Surrounded by neat, geometric rows of newly mounted solar panels, they surveyed a setup that represents far more than just a corporate move toward sustainability. Since the escalation of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, this industrial town has endured wave after wave of targeted attacks, triggering catastrophic, mass power outages across the region. For a factory dedicated to manufacturing and supplying doors to homes and businesses throughout the country, maintaining a steady rhythm of production has become an extraordinary, daily logistical challenge.
The consequences of these attacks were felt most brutally during the bitter winter months, when severely depleted power supplies forced grid operators to implement rolling blackouts nationwide. The conditions inside industrial facilities were harsh. On some particularly cold days, factory employees were forced to burn discarded scraps of wood in a conventional fireplace just to keep the main warehouse warm enough for people to work. While the facility was equipped with backup diesel generators, running them continuously proved to be exorbitantly expensive, draining financial resources at a time when economic margins were already razor-thin.
Tired of relying on a fragile national energy grid that was being routinely and deliberately bombarded by Russian missiles, the owner of the facility, known as Yaroslav, made a decisive choice earlier this year to invest in solar energy.
Switching to solar energy will enable them to further expand operational capacity and achieve a vital degree of independence from the general electrical grid, Yaroslav explained during a conversation on the roof. It will ultimately prove to be cheaper, more economical, and significantly more ecological than relying on fossil fuel backups or a compromised grid. Like many citizens operating businesses under the constant threat of aerial bombardment, Yaroslav requested that Grist use only his first name and withhold specific identifying details about his manufacturing facility out of a very real and persistent fear of potential Russian military retaliation.
The pivot toward renewable energy by private businesses across Ukraine is becoming increasingly common, supported by a mix of corporate initiative and state-level backing. In the spring, Yaroslav contacted Yasno, a major private Ukrainian electricity and gas supplier, to evaluate his roof and coordinate the installation of photovoltaic panels. Clients working with Yasno typically finance the acquisition and setup of the panels themselves, but they often do so with the crucial assistance of targeted government programs designed to absorb a significant portion of the initial financial burden.
Recognizing the existential vulnerability of the energy sector, the Ukrainian government created robust financial incentives to encourage commercial and industrial enterprises to transition swiftly toward renewable and distributed generation. Among these initiatives is the "Affordable Loans 5-7-9" program, a state-backed scheme that offers specialized low-interest loans specifically earmarked for purchasing solar panels, inverters, and complementary energy storage equipment. These preferential loans feature highly favorable interest rates set at 5, 7, or 9 percent, depending entirely on the scale and classification of the business, and they can cover up to an impressive 80 percent of the total installation costs.
Under the arrangement, Yasno engineers evaluated the structural integrity of the Bila Tserkva warehouse, determined the optimal placement for hundreds of high-efficiency solar panels across the rooftop, and carried out the physical installation. This project is just one of dozens of similar commercial installations that the company has undertaken across various regions of the country. Over the past two years, Yasno has successfully installed solar arrays at 117 separate industrial and commercial sites, accumulating a combined generation capacity of 23 megawatts. Although the company was forced to temporarily pause its commercial installation operations during the chaotic initial phases of the war, it successfully resumed its vital work in the summer of 2024.
Volodymyr Hershtun, a service maintenance manager with Yasno who personally led the complex solar project in Bila Tserkva, noted that Ukraine is rapidly developing its renewable energy portfolio out of absolute necessity. The country requires a decentralized and flexible energy infrastructure to maintain basic societal resilience as it continues to face a relentless barrage of targeted Russian attacks.
The enemy is systematically trying to destroy our heavy energy infrastructure, Hershtun observed, pointing out the strategic advantage of smaller, modular systems. We are building systems that are very easy to restore if damaged, and critically, those same modern setups can store electric energy for use when the grid goes dark.
Before Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine’s electrical grid was characterized by a highly centralized, Soviet-legacy architecture heavily dominated by baseload nuclear power. More than half of the entire nation’s electricity was supplied by four massive nuclear power plants scattered across the country, while domestic natural gas and coal-fired thermal power stations generated roughly a quarter of the total energy mix. Renewable energy sources accounted for only a modest share of the overall portfolio, though the nation had experienced a rapid, aggressive expansion of commercial solar generation in the years immediately preceding the war.
That remarkable pre-war surge in renewable energy was largely driven by Ukraine’s "green tariff" program, a progressive government policy that actively encouraged both households and private businesses to invest in localized solar and wind power production by guaranteeing above-market financial payments for any excess electricity fed back into the public grid. Ukrainian legislation guarantees the continuation of this tariff framework through 2030, and lawmakers have consistently described the program as a foundational stepping stone toward fully integrating the nation’s energy market into the broader regulatory and economic framework of the European Union.
These forward-looking government incentives successfully motivated Ukrainian entrepreneurs and corporations to install approximately 8 gigawatts of solar generation capacity by the time the full-scale conflict erupted in 2022. However, the subsequent years of systematic Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure completely upended that centralized operational model. Since the onset of the invasion, Russian cruise missiles, ballistic weapons, and explosive drones have repeatedly and deliberately struck thermal power plants, high-voltage electrical substations, and critical transmission lines, leaving millions of civilian households entirely without electricity or district heating during the coldest months of the year.
Statistical assessments indicate that roughly 30 percent of Ukraine’s pre-war installed solar capacity, along with the vast majority of the country’s 36 utility-scale wind farms located in the contested southern regions, have either been physically destroyed, fallen under hostile Russian military occupation, or remain completely unaccounted for. Compounding this severe structural crisis, the massive Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Europe—the largest nuclear facility on the continent—has been forcibly shut down and kept under illegal Russian military control since the earliest days of the invasion. Given the deeply painful historical legacy of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, millions of Ukrainians continue to live with the profound, psychological dread of another catastrophic nuclear incident caused by ongoing military hostilities.
The persistent, calculated strikes against the national grid have predictably caused chronic, prolonged power outages that disrupt every aspect of daily existence. Even major urban centers like parts of Kyiv continue to grapple with severe electricity rationing, enduring scheduled blackouts that can stretch on for hours at a time. The National Bank of Ukraine has formally reported that Russia’s ongoing military campaign against the country’s energy assets has severely worsened macroeconomic forecasts, forcing officials to upwardly revise the projected national electricity deficit from an initial 3 percent to a staggering 6 percent.
With the profound vulnerabilities of relying on massive, centralized power generation stations thoroughly exposed by wartime destruction, Ukraine has been forced to dramatically accelerate its structural pivot toward smaller, highly distributed sources of electricity that are inherently decentralized and far harder for enemy forces to knock completely offline. Data compiled by the Solar Energy Association of Ukraine shows that in 2025 alone, an estimated 1.5 gigawatts of new solar capacity was successfully constructed across the country—representing nearly double the total volume added in the prior year—with industry analysts expecting 2026 installations to match or exceed that impressive pace.
Renewables have become the very obvious choice for Ukraine when the full-scale invasion started and when Russia started deliberately and heavily attacking the energy infrastructure, especially the centralized generation facilities, explained Anastasia Vereshchynska, director of the European-Ukrainian Energy Agency, a prominent nonprofit organization that works closely with energy efficiency initiatives and renewable resources throughout the country.
These urgent, grassroots investments in distributed energy are widely expected to help ordinary Ukrainians weather upcoming brutal winters. During the previous winter season, as environmental temperatures plummeted to a harsh -1 degree Fahrenheit, relentless Russian bombardments caused widespread, catastrophic failures in electricity and municipal heating systems. Kyiv, the nation’s capital, was left with a critically inadequate energy supply, possessing just half of the total electricity required to sustain the city through the freezing months, prompting President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to declare a formal state of emergency.
Volodymyr, a professional taxi driver living in Kyiv who requested that his last name be withheld for personal safety reasons, recounted the harrowing conditions he faced earlier in the year. During last winter’s heaviest air raids, his high-rise residential apartment building completely lost its connection to the municipal power grid, abruptly cutting off his family from both central heating and running hot water. Fortunately, he noted with cautious relief, his apartment happened to face directly south, allowing it to capture maximum sunlight during daylight hours, which helped keep the indoor living space marginally warmer.
In an effort to mitigate the profound disruptions caused by recurring blackouts, the management company responsible for his residential building subsequently decided to take matters into their own hands. They initiated plans to install solar panels directly on the rooftop, designed to provide enough auxiliary power to keep the building’s domestic water boiler functioning and operate the elevators during emergency shutdowns. The planned installation is moving forward with the financial backing of the government’s 5-7-9 loan program.
It’s a cool thing that the government covers at least part of the cost, Volodymyr said, reflecting on the community-level adaptation. In emergency cases, during unexpected power outages, you could turn to the solar panels. There is no harm to the planet. It’s a good thing.
The absolute necessity for reliable, independent renewable energy is felt most acutely in small towns and rural settlements situated in close proximity to the active war frontlines. As Russian military forces attempt to advance, frontline communities are frequently cut off entirely from the national energy grid as artillery fire and aerial drones demolish transmission lines. Furthermore, the extreme physical danger faced by civilian utility maintenance crews makes necessary grid repairs extraordinarily difficult or, in many cases, completely impossible to execute. Certain remote villages have become so perilous that municipal repair teams simply cannot be deployed, leaving residents stranded for months without stable electricity or any functional means of communicating with the outside world.
In response to these desperate conditions, dedicated civilian volunteers and humanitarian nongovernmental organizations have increasingly stepped into the vacuum, working tirelessly to transport and install localized solar panels and modular battery storage systems capable of keeping essential community hubs, homes, and local businesses running. Denny Ugorchuk, the founder of Kosmo Tabir, an NGO that specializes in helping isolated rural villages access decentralized solar energy, noted that while major project funding often originates from generous international partners in the West, smaller, grassroots projects are frequently sustained by the modest donations of ordinary Ukrainians. In one notable rural community, a small solar array installed at a private residential home provided a 50-year-old local woman with the reliable electricity needed to participate in online university classes.
In Ukraine today, solar panels have transcended their traditional role as a mere environmental choice, Ugorchuk emphasized. They have become a basic human right. People should have access to communicate with one another—you can call a doctor, you can call the police, and it helps you feel safe.