Ukraine has slowed down the pace of reforms in the spheres of energy and environment within the implementation of the Association Agreement. The main reason – poor quality and speed of relevant secondary legislation preparation in oil and gas sector, renewable energy and energy efficiency fields. “This is a difficult period. However, we are on the stage, when the absence of reforms is impossible. We are forced to make reforms in a difficult time, in unfavourable conditions, despite the danger of misinformation. That’s it and NGOs, media and government officials have no other way than fight and move forward, “- said an independent expert Svitlana Golikova during the discussion at the Ukrainian media crisis center.

The process of formation of energy regulator – the National Energy and Utilities Commission – is partly completed. Following the results of open competition, 5 new members of the Commission were selected. “Commission is functional again. At the moment, it has serious challenges with regard to the adoption of legal acts on the electricity market. Another great problem now is unbundling of “olbenergos”. We hope that reforms will start now, as all institutions are functional”, – explained Svitlana Golikova.

Among the main problems of the gas market is lack of a clear model for liberalisation of gas prices for the population. “Instead of adoption of clear model of price liberalisation, the special obligations were prolonged, preserving uncertainty. Hopes also relate to the NEURC, which should regulate gas distribution tariffs and create more favourable regulatory framework for gas exchange trading “, – said Roman Nitsovych, Project Manager of DiXi Group.

Experts have also noted problems in the renewable energy and environmental fields. The Parliament adopted the Laws of Ukraine “On Strategic Environmental Assessment” and “On Environmental Impact Assessment”. “Unfortunately, one of the laws, in general, can not be implemented in practice, because there is no secondary legislation, and such regulations were not even published for public discussion “, – said Anastasiya Yermakova, expert of DiXi Group. In addition, the government has not yet adopted the State Environment Policy Strategy.

There are more implementation problems in the energy efficiency sector. So far, there is no secondary legislation for the Law “On Energy Efficiency of Buildings”. In addition, budget money allocated this year to the program of “warm loans” is spend already by 50%. “Given the fact that this year funding began only at the end of April, most of the funds were exhausted during 1.5 months. For example, for the condominiums only 23% of funding remain, taking into account that this year were allocated the largest funds ever- about 200 million hryvnias “, – said Juliya Cheberyak, expert of the Civil Network OPORA.

The event was organised by the NGO “DiXi Group”, Civil Network “OPORA”, All-Ukrainian NGO “Energy Association of Ukraine”, Resource & Analysis Center “Society and Environment”, Association “European-Ukrainian Energy Agency” within the project “Enhancing impact of civil society in monitoring and policy dialogue on energy and related sectors’ reforms in line with the Association Agreement implementation”.

The project funded by the EU within the EU4Energy Initiative and co-funded by the International Renaissance Foundation. It aims at strengthening the role of civil society in advocating reforms in the energy and related sectors.

The expert assessment is based on regular monitoring of Ukraine’s implementation of the Association Agreement in the fields of energy and environment. Members of six working groups are responsible for the expertise to unveil the latest information on conducted reforms and reinforce it by analytical products.

Source: Energy reforms