Recently, together with 50 Ukrainian communities, we sent a joint letter to the United States government. In this letter, we thank the U.S. government for its humanitarian support to Ukraine, including diesel generators, and at the same time believe it is important to include renewable energy technologies in such assistance.
While the generators donated have helped and will continue to help communities more easily survive the power outages, they are only a temporary solution. Instead, renewable energy technologies will not only support them during power outages, but will also help to strengthen energy independence and ensure a cleaner environment in the long term.
Therefore, in our appeal, we proposed to consider renewable energy as an option for future aid packages for hospitals, schools, kindergartens, water supply and sanitation systems. Ecoaction’s recent information tour of green recovery projects showed that solar panels with storage can provide schools and outpatient clinics with electricity even during massive power outages, while heat pumps help municipal buildings save significant heating costs.
In addition, Oleksandr Kubrakov, Vice Prime Minister for Reconstruction of Ukraine, recently announced the launch of a joint project with American partners to strengthen the energy resilience of communities. According to him, the project will include the development of small distributed generation, the introduction of high-efficiency cogeneration, and a gradual transition to renewable energy sources.
The 50 communities that supported the letter also expressed their readiness to join the project as pilot communities. They also stressed that they need a mechanism for providing such assistance that municipalities can access directly. We hope that our vision will also be taken into account in the further planning of U.S.-Ukrainian cooperation in this area.
The letter was sent to the U.S. Department of State, the Department of Energy, and a number of other recipients. For the full text of the letter, a list of recipients and signatories, please follow the link (PDF).