Year 2025 becomes year of wind power development revival — UWEA deputy chair
The year of 2025 has become a year of active recovery in the development and construction of wind power projects, driven by improvements in the legislative framework, while the industry expects further legislative changes to support continued growth, said Ivan Bondarchuk, Partner and Head of the Energy Practice at LCF and Deputy Chairman of the Board of the Ukrainian Wind Energy Association (UWEA).
"2025 can indeed be described as a year of restored momentum in wind power development and construction, because in 2023, as legal advisers, we were supporting only isolated projects that had effectively been launched before the war. In 2024, the LCF team was already advising on new investment projects. But in 2025, we saw acceleration and a truly new scale of development and new generating capacity," he said during UWEA's year-end press conference at Interfax-Ukraine on Friday.
According to him, market players and the UWEA "have been very successful in shaping the legal and regulatory framework needed for rapid change."
Among the legislative initiatives that contributed to faster wind power development, Bondarchuk cited the extension of grid connection agreement terms; the capacity reservation mechanism, which gives developers two additional years to complete all preparatory work; the introduction of the cable pooling mechanism; and the extension of the possibility to use detailed territorial plans to change land designation.
"Therefore, I am confident that we will see an acceleration in the development of such projects," the UWEA deputy chair said.
He also pointed out that the sector is now awaiting, in particular, improvements to the green auction system that would provide predictable long-term offtake and set the necessary level of price caps. In addition, it is critically important to allow market participants to independently construct grid connection facilities at sites owned by the transmission system operator.
"This right already exists and has been tested at the facilities of distribution system operators. This mechanism has proven effective. It allows developers, investors, and contractors to independently control construction timelines, without depending on Ukrenergo's tender procedures and its internal bureaucratic processes," the lawyer explained, adding that this would significantly increase predictability in commissioning wind power plants.
At the same time, Bondarchuk also emphasized the need to adopt a bill to bring Ukrainian legislation into line with the EU's RED III Directive, in particular with regard to the establishment of renewable energy acceleration zones and the designation of an authority responsible for a "one-stop shop" for issuing licenses.
"Accordingly, this will mean setting strict deadlines within which a project must obtain all permits: 12 months for acceleration zones and 24 months for other territories of Ukraine," he said, expressing confidence that adoption of the bill would create a more predictable regulatory environment in which investors would clearly understand the stage of project development they are at and when they can move on to the next steps.
"This will, I am sure, unblock a very large number of projects, make it easier to attract financing, possibly also help attract financing at earlier stages, and, accordingly, we will have a larger project portfolio and growth in distributed generation capacity," the UWEA deputy board chairman concluded.
As reported, at the same press conference UWEA Chairman Andriy Konechenkov said that since the beginning of 2025, 324 MW of new wind power capacity has been built in Ukraine, while over the previous two years – between 2022 and the first quarter of 2025 – 248 MW of new wind power plants were commissioned.
According to him, approximately 40% of this capacity has already been connected to the grid and is generating electricity, while the remainder is in the testing phase and, according to company forecasts, will be connected either by the end of this year or by the end of the first quarter of 2026.
In addition, Konechenkov said that new wind power projects with a total capacity of 4.5 GW are currently under development in Ukraine, of which 44% are located in the western part of the country, 34% in the central regions, and the remaining 22% in southern Ukraine, in Odesa and Mykolaiv regions.
According to UWEA data, the total installed capacity of wind power plants in Ukraine currently stands at 2.3 GW, of which 1.3 GW is located in temporarily occupied territories.
In addition, Ukraine has a total installed capacity of 534 MW in energy storage systems (ESS, BESS).