Western investors are ready to build 1.5 GW of generation capacity in Ukraine, but the lack of war risk insurance delays investment.

Oleksandr Kharchenko, director of the Energy Research Center, said that American and European investors are ready to invest in Ukrainian energy despite the war and have potential projects to construct more than 1.5 GW of new power plants.

“But to implement the projects, they need insurance,” he added.

The main obstacle to implementing these projects is the lack of a rapid insurance mechanism for military and political risks. Current insurance instruments work too slowly because decisions are made every 9-12 months and are not designed for the large-scale application that Ukraine requires. Kharchenko believes that these mechanisms should be reduced to a few months.

The expert added that access to private capital is a key tool for the rapid recovery of Ukraine’s energy sector because private investors make decisions much faster than the state. If this process can be accelerated, foreign investors can significantly accelerate the energy sector’s recovery, as they are already on this path.