The debt on the balancing electricity market of Ukraine reached a record high of UAH 34.5 billion in 2024, which poses a serious threat to the development of the country’s energy sector.

This was written by Adrian Prokop, an expert on the Energy program of the Ukrainian Institute of the Future analytical center..

" debt on the balancing market to NPC Ukrenergo increased by 12.7% and reached UAH 34.5 billion. In turn, Ukrenergo’s debt to balancing service providers amounted to UAH 13.6 billion,” Prokop noted, emphasizing the scale of the problem.

The expert notes that this situation creates significant obstacles to the development of the new generation and investment in the industry: “There is a situation where, having sold electricity, you can expect a year or a year and a half to receive funds. And this situation, of course, does not encourage “entering the market” even for those who have already built their own generation.”.

Prokop noted that the bill recently adopted by the Verkhovna Rada partially solves the problem, but this is not enough: “However, such steps are half-hearted and do not solve the problem as a whole, because these are reactive measures at a time when it is no longer possible to ignore the debt problem.”.

According to the expert, systemic changes are needed to resolve the situation: “Instead, proactive measures are needed - systemic policies that could balance the market and gradually deprive it of debt. This is a key prerequisite for the emergence of a new generation, which is extremely necessary in conditions where the enemy regularly destroys the energy system."

At the same time, Prokop emphasizes that administrative methods will not solve the problem.

“Administrative methods and bureaucratic orders to build a new generation will not work,” he concluded.

Earlier, a report by the Florence school of regulation (FSR) also noted that the critical situation with debt on the balancing market is also associated with imperfect debt collection mechanisms and the lack of effective financial guarantees from market participants. And this negatively affects the liquidity of the entire energy sector and its investment attractiveness.