As soon as the Russian invasion of Ukraine started, Yuliana Onishchuk knew she had to help her country. News coverage of the initial occupation of the Kyiv region showed that Irpin City and Bucha, just outside the capital, had sustained huge damage, and it was clear to Onishchuk that critical infrastructure would need to be repaired. “I saw the schools, and I was sure that we would have to rebuild them,” Onishchuk says. She saw an opportunity. “I realized: We have to rebuild them in a new way.”

Putting her expertise as an energy lawyer and solar power project manager to good use, Onishchuk set up an NGO, the Energy Act for Ukraine Foundation. “I was already in renewables, and I love renewables.” The foundation would help rebuild schools and hospitals and equip them with solar panels, offering them energy independence while at the same time helping Ukrainians understand the importance of clean energy.

Then, in October 2022, Russia started attacking Ukraine’s energy system. Very quickly half of the country’s grid was damaged. In 2023, attacks moved from hitting just the grid to targeting energy production. Millions of Ukrainians faced widespread blackouts across the freezing winter months of 2023.

With the country plunged into energy poverty, designing schools and hospitals with energy independence wasn’t just a smart step on the road to the green transition—it was a vital solution for keeping them functioning during the invasion. And so now, the foundation’s mission is two-fold: to rebuild Ukraine with both sustainability and energy security in mind.

Ahead of speaking at the WIRED & Octopus Energy Tech Summit in Berlin on October 10, Yuliana sat down with WIRED to discuss the foundation’s work. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

WIRED: How badly has Russia’s invasion impacted the energy supply in Ukraine?

Yuliana Onishchuk: Before the war, 55 percent of Ukraine’s generation was nuclear, and one of the biggest nuclear power plants, which supplied more than half of this nuclear power, was Zaporizhzhia. Now it is occupied.

Again, before the invasion, 35 percent of energy generation was from thermal power plants, which became a particular focus of Russia this year. They realized that this supply was exactly what they should attack, because you can hardly protect that 35 percent, and it is not as dangerous to target as nuclear.

We lost 80 percent of the wind power because almost all wind turbines are located in the south. Mostly, the south is occupied. Solar farms that are situated on the east and south were either attacked or stolen—they dismantled solar panels and stole them.

So, we lost a lot. Russia has destroyed 50 percent of our electricity-generation capacity.

This must make life incredibly difficult for people.

With the Zaporizhzhia plant occupied, for the past two years we have repaired extra generation units at other nuclear plants, as not all units were on when the war started. We could not be without the 55 percent of our energy generation that comes from nuclear—it’s a huge amount. Now, as far as I know, all units in all plants are on in Ukraine.

That has helped us to get out of blackouts that were happening in May, June, and July of this year. For almost three months, we experienced very long-lasting blackouts for up to 12 hours. Right now, we don’t have lots of large blackouts; only the settlements, villages, and cities that are at the frontline areas are in blackouts all the time.

But we still have a percentage of the rest of the population that is experiencing blackouts because the generation units—whether it’s renewables or thermal power plants—are being attacked, together with the distribution grids. For the past three months, absolutely every city in the country experienced a blackout.

And this is why decentralizing energy production is useful?

Yes. Decentralization in general, and energy decentralization for Ukraine, is important for one main reason—it ensures the security of electricity supply to the population. In the financial world, how do you decrease your risk of losing your finances? You need to have many sources. It is much harder to attack 15 solar power plants rather than one thermal power plant.

Nuclear is great in the sense that it provides a lot of basic electricity generation, but it’s only great when you don’t have such a neighbor as Russia, because they aim to attack and manipulate. So renewable, decentralized energy sources have to be applied in Ukraine as much as possible. If each of us could have a solar power plant or solar panels on the roof, or solar panels on the ground, we would be OK with any blackout or any attack.

In the situation we are in, each Ukrainian has to think about what he or she can do to ensure an energy supply. And the Ukrainian government should create incentives and financial possibilities for the population to create their own decentralized energy sources. For many Ukrainians it will be very expensive still, although the technology is quite cheap already for solar. Decentralized energy sources ensure that we have electricity whenever we need it.

So tell us about how the Energy Act for Ukraine Foundation is helping decentralize energy.

In 2023, we finished four hospitals. So four regional hospitals, huge hospitals for the whole region, are equipped with regenerative energy, solar power and energy storage, allowing for intensive care and surgery units and maternity units. They can operate without electricity for up to six hours. So we connect all lifesaving equipment in these buildings to the energy storage.

In general, we have finished nine buildings with hybrid solar systems. Now we are in the process of completing around 14 more by the end of the year. We build water-supply buildings, administrative buildings, hospitals, and schools, so we have four categories. But it’s nothing if you compare what we’ve built to the quantity of damaged schools and hospitals in Ukraine.

So next year, we would love to build at least 30 buildings. And in general, the aim is to do at least 30 every year. When we were established we aimed to build 100 solar schools and 50 solar hospitals in five years. So, every year we have to do at least 30. This is an official campaign that we have, and we are looking for partners and donors all the time to make it happen.

What’s the difference when equipping a school with decentralized solar power compared to a hospital?

The capacity that we install is different, but the process is the same, in the sense that we identify what is needed according to our own criteria. For example, to rebuild a school it should have a bomb shelter, there should be at least 500 pupils that get an education, they should be able to study offline, and technically it should be possible to build.

For schools, a typical capacity for a solar power plant would be around 20 to 30 kilowatts, and storages would be around 40 kilowatts per hour, which means that we cover around 35 percent of yearly consumption of the school. Depending on their consumption, we can cover from 30 percent to 50 percent of their yearly consumption, and in theory our energy storage would cover around six hours of blackouts. However, in practice, we found that schools are able to use storage for eight hours because their behavior is smart.

We do the same with the hospitals, it’s just that we create solar-powered buildings with surgeries and intensive care units. This is the rule—we don’t put energy storage in pediatric buildings, as doctors don’t save lives there, you just give basic services to kids. The capacities are different between buildings. For hospitals, the capacity is usually 60 to 70 kilowatts, so it’s twice more solar and twice more storage. The budget for one school in total is around €50,000. The budget for one hospital is around €100,000.

We can build a lot of things, but then it’s up to people, who have to behave so that they can use them in the most efficient way. It’s also then their job to look after it, to maintain it.

What impact does your work have?

Our main job, unfortunately, is to cover blackouts all the time. But there are also other direct impacts, on the financial side. The solar energy systems we implement in our schools saves them between €1,500 to €2,000 per year. For hospitals, it’s around €2,500 to €3,000 per year.

But the indirect impacts are even more important. When we come to these small communities, people are shocked and so interested. People learn, and they ask us how they can do what we do, if we can teach them, how they should talk to the government, if we can do more.

We’ve developed an educational course on sustainability and green energy where we educate kids in every school on why it is important that sustainable energy is here. We try to raise their interest in green energy, to show them a bigger picture on the sustainable way of living, and about how everything is connected.

Hear Yuliana Onishchuk speak at the WIRED & Octopus Energy Tech Summit at Kraftwerk in Berlin on October 10. Discover everything you need to know about the event here, and get tickets at energy-tech-summit.wired.com