New Solar Station in Crimea Becomes Ukraine's Green Strategy Milestone

KYIV, Ukraine, June 7, 2011 Pursuing a long-term strategy, Ukraine has finalized construction of a new solar energy power station in Crimea. Being highly dependent on imported energy resources, the country puts a lot of efforts to make the internal energy production and consumption more efficient. The newly built solar plant is also a part of the National Projects, aimed at lessening the imported energy consumption by 30 percent by year 2015. The construction of the solar power plant capable of producing 25 thousand megawatt-hours of environmentally clean electrical energy per year has been accomplished in accordance with Nature Energy project. Such capacity will meet the needs of about 5000 households in the area and will help reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 20 thousand tons per year. Natural Energy is one of Ukraine's National Projects launched by the Ukrainian leadership in late 2010. It is aimed at producing electric energy from the "clean" sources such as the sun and the wind in the amount of 2000 MW. The objective of such initiative is to supply the area with low transportation cost electricity and preserve the environment making these areas attractive for tourism development. The State Agency of Ukraine for Energy Efficiency and Energy Conservation which developed a program of energy efficiency, reports that the share of alternative energy shall make up to 30 percent of Ukrainian energy market before 2015. Nowadays, around 60 percent of energy resources, mainly natural gas, in the country is imported. Ukraine has an extensive potential market of solar energy projects. The capacity of solar radiation in Ukraine reaches from 800 to 1450 W/m squared per year. Hence Ukraine's geographical position, the southern regions of the country bear the highest potential: Crimea, Mykolaiv, Kherson and Odesa regions. The main incentive for the growth of Ukraine's solar Photovoltaic market is a so-called green tariff system, introduced in September 2008 and amended in April 2009, which introduced fixed feed-in tariffs for electricity from renewable sources for 20 years. Ukraine is the twelfth largest energy market in the world with an installed capacity of 54 GW as of 2009, exporting its excess electricity to such countries as Russia, Slovakia, Romania, Poland, Moldova and Hungary.