ONE YEAR SINCE THE BEGINNING OF THE RF’S (RUSSIAN FEDERATION) FULL-SCALE AGGRESSION AGAINST UKRAINE AND SUPPORT FOR UKRAINIAN INDUSTRY FROM THE EU-FUNDED EU4ENVIRONMENT ACTION
Due to the RF’s full-scale invasion into Ukraine, which began a year ago on February 24, 2022, the Ukrainian economy suffered the largest losses since independence because of significant destruction of its critical infrastructure. At the same time, the territory of Ukraine suffers from additional environmental impacts every day, despite the reduction of industrial emissions. Ukrainian businesses are struggling to find ways to restore their capacities and create safe working conditions to meet the population’s demand for critical goods and services. All this has had a significant impact on the consciousness of Ukrainians, transforming their value system, changing assessment of the past, and clearly defining the priorities for the future.
In these most difficult times for Ukraine, business, government and society have come together and are ready to recover and restore the country by implementing the principles of the circular economy, taking care of waste management and following the EU’s Green Deal.
The EU-funded EU4Environment Action, under the “Circular Economy and New Growth Opportunities” component implemented by the Resource Efficient and Cleaner Production Centre, supports the green recovery of industry and helps reduce the negative impact on the environment.
Thus, in 2022, active work with national industrial enterprises continued. Monitoring was conducted for 14 enterprises participating in the RECP Clubs active in Khmelnytskyi and Poltava. The enterprises from different sectors of industry (light, food, processing, printing, machine-building and metallurgical industries, electrical equipment production, and agricultural production) have implemented and continue to implement the developed and proposed RECP options. As a result, the enterprises have already decreased energy consumption by more than 122,000 kWh per year and reduced harmful emissions by almost 40 tons of CO2-eq per year.
Active work is underway with demonstration companies participating in the EU4Environment Action. According to the results of the monitoring conducted at the end of 2022, 11 companies have already saved EUR 93,000 per year, decreased energy consumption by 1,600,000 kWh and reduced harmful emissions by more than 300 tons of CO2-eq. per year.
Many enterprises are forced to relocate their production facilities from areas where hostilities are ongoing to safer areas of Ukraine to continue their operations. Thus, according to the Ministry of Economy of Ukraine, more than 700 Ukrainian enterprises have been relocated under the state relocation programme. EU4Environment has joined this activity to identify the problems and needs of national industrial enterprises and to facilitate their further green recovery by consulting on the implementation of modern resource and energy efficiency technologies, as well as on the selection of financial opportunities for this. A survey of enterprises is currently underway (until the end of March 2023), which will analyze the problems faced by enterprises during their current operations or forced relocation.
In 2023, Ukrainian business, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, which play an important role in economic recovery will need
– consulting on green industrial recovery, efficient waste management, and implementation of resource efficient and cleaner production; and
– assistance in finding investments and identifying financial opportunities both to increase resource and energy efficiency and to relocate their production facilities for full recovery.
