Denmark’s state-owned export bank lent €100 million to build a large new wind farm in Ukraine. The project, which will use turbines from the Danish manufacturer Vestas and be operated by the Ukrainian agricultural company Kernal for both its own use and power sales to the country’s battered grid, stems from the Export and Investment Fund’s decision that “as a principle, we will ignore the fact that there is a war” and evaluate potential investments strictly on their economic merits, CEO Peder Lundquist told Semafor. Out of a portfolio of several dozen projects the fund has backed in Ukraine since the 2022 invasion across the energy, agricultural, and other sectors, Lundquist said, none have yet sustained major damage from Russian attacks.
Wind farms in particular are extremely difficult to knock out with drones or rockets, he said, and therefore a fairly safe investment despite the war; last year the fund made another major investment in a separate wind project with the Ukrainian energy company DTEK. More similar investments are forthcoming over the next year or so, he said: “There’s huge potential for energy infrastructure investment in Ukraine.”