You're reading: Lviv project a glimmer of hope for energy sector

The last in the Kyiv Post's four-part 'Crisis of Power' series on the troubled energy sector analyzes a rare energy-conservation success story

Sometimes, the problems facing Ukraine’s energy sector appear overwhelming. Analysts say the backbone of the system the regional distributors and  the central wholesale market known as Energorynok – is corrupt and dysfunctional.

On top of that, consumers often fail to pay their energy bills, leaving the country’s energy generators cash-strapped and unable to purchase fuel.

But one Lviv-based energy conservation project set up by an international energy conservation NGO, the Alliance to Save Energy, and sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development, has shown that even in the face of Ukraine’s energy crisis, a small project can make a big difference.

In a 1997 demonstration project, the Alliance turned Lviv’s School for Children with Cardiovascular Disease, a building complex with one of the city’s most expensive heating bills, into a classic model of energy efficiency.

‘We added a state-of-the-art heat control system, and refurbished and insulated the windows,’ said Anatoly Kopets, Project Manager for the Lviv Demonstration Project.

‘These relatively simple upgrades lead to 43 percent energy savings.’

Kopets explained that since the old heating regulators were centrally and poorly controlled, rooms would often end up too hot. As a result, people would open the windows in order to regulate the temperature, he said.

Now, a newly installed heating control system monitors the entire building and maintains the temperature at any particular area of the building at a desired temperature.

The weatherization (renovating and insulation) of the school’s 300 windows also had a big effect.

By simply filling all the cracks and sealing the edges of the windows with a silicon-based material, a major source of energy loss during the winter season was eliminated.

Before the upgrades, the school’s heating system consumed more than 900 MWh of electricity over the heating season. Today, three years after the work was completed, it consumes around 544 MWh – almost 400 MWh less then before the upgrades.

The total cost of the work stood at a hefty $29,000. Of that, $20,000 was spent fixing the windows and $9,000 on the heating-control system.

While USAID financed the bulk of project with a $19,000 contribution, Kopets said an important step forward in national energy awareness was taken when Lviv city administration pumped $10,000 from its own budget into the energy-saving scheme.

Kopets, a former deputy mayor of Lviv, had the ear of the city administration.

‘I told them, ‘Look, since we have the money in the budget, let’s not do just any project, but a good project,” he said. ‘Especially this one since it involved the School for Children with Cardiovascular Disease.

‘We convinced them that it was an investment.’

Two years later, the city has not only gotten its $10,000 back, but it has saved about $5,000 per year thereafter.

Andry Chumak, energy specialist for the project and a former engineer at municipal heating company LvivTeploenergo, said that the success of the pilot project is spawning similar heat-saving schemes in Lviv and the surrounding area.

‘LvivTeploenergo has since replicated this work on 10 communal apartment complexes in Lviv,’ he said.

Furthermore, with the help of professional training sessions organized by the alliance both in Lviv and in Poland, several companies have appeared that are capable of carrying out energy-saving renovations of buildings.

And Chumak said that other Ukrainian cities anticipate that they also will be able to cut their communal heating bills through similar projects.

The alliance is already involved in similar demonstration projects in Ivano-Frankivsk, Kharkiv, Khmelnytsky, Lutsk and Ternopil.

‘It’s a good example of successful reforms at the local level,’ Kopets said.

Kopets believes that oblast-level government can better identify and solve many lingering problems from Ukraine’s Soviet era.

‘If the regions were given more authority, they could better handle and solve such local issues,’ he said. ‘These are local issues and they can be solved at the local level.’

The regions’ dependence on Kyiv for their budgets is a major impediment to reform projects, he said.

Another problem preventing individual homeowners from investing in energy-saving measures is the murky issue of property ownership.

The few energy-saving projects that have been completed in Lviv are all buildings owned by and funded by the city budget – the city had a clear incentive to upgrade them.

In contrast, due to subsidies and the lack of ‘full-fledged’ ownership to property, there is no incentive for homeowners to spend money on similar schemes, Kopets said.

‘In a building divided among several owners, each tenant pays the heating bill not proportionally to the amount of energy used, but according to the size of their apartment,’ Kopets said. ‘So if one of the owners fixes the heating system, he will still pay the same amount [proportionally] when the bill comes around.’

Issuing privileges to those who do invest in energy-saving is the answer, Kopets said.

And he is confident that by steadily lobbying the city administration, his organization will help raise awareness of energy conservation issues among government officials and the population in general.

One of the goals of the alliance to Save Energy is to initiate Ukrainian NGO’s to lobby the government to support such projects, he said. ‘Increasing public awareness is also a big goal of ours.’

Currently, the alliance is helping fund the upgrade of one of Lviv’s most energy-inefficient buildings – the Lviv Emergency Hospital. The hospital costs the city about $1 million to heat every year.

But like many projects in Ukraine, financing is a major problem.

‘It will be a much more expensive project,’ Kopets said. ‘However, it’s an investment.’