Environmental investments in Ukraine are focused on several key areas: reducing greenhouse gas emissions, optimising energy consumption, introducing renewable energy, modernising equipment and improving water treatment. These initiatives are driven by the need to comply with European legislation, in particular systems such as MRV (measurement, reporting and verification), CBAM (carbon border adjustment mechanism), ESRS (European sustainability reporting standards) and ETS (emissions trading system). For every enterprise that is ready to supply its products to the EU and integrate into the European community, this terminology translates into investments in environmental projects.
Metinvest’s experience: husks instead of gas
Enterprises that pollute the air and consume large amounts of electricity and natural gas are forced to address production modernisation under the “green agenda”.
Metinvest Group reports that some enterprises are optimising energy consumption and gradually switching to alternative energy sources. Metinvest’s press office told NV Business: “For example, at Northern and Central Iron Ore, natural gas has been partly replaced with biofuel (sunflower husks), which is already contributing to the reduction of CO₂ emissions.”
The Group is implementing CO₂ emissions management systems such as MRV, CBAM, ESRS and ETS. Metinvest commented: “These systems not only allow compliance with European standards, but also optimise production processes by reducing fuel and energy costs.” The Group expects compliance with the requirements of these systems to not only help to reduce environmental impact, but also provide economic benefits: lowering energy costs, improving production efficiency and enabling uninterrupted exports to the EU.
Metinvest has calculated that, overall, its environmental expenditures in 2024 amounted to US$170.5 million, of which US$39.8 million was capital investments, US$129.1 million operating expenses and US$1.5 million other costs. The Group’s press office clarified: “This is 2% higher than in 2023 and 5% higher than in 2022.”
Metinvest noted that environmental initiatives enable enterprises not only to reduce their environmental impact, but also to save costs. The use of alternative energy sources, such as biofuel, cuts energy expenses, while monitoring systems like MRV or ETS provide tools for analysing efficiency and making management decisions.