Owner of Dnipro-Buzka wind farm, Belgium’s SREW N.V., initiates arbitration against Ukraine

Interfax | 2 November 2021

Owner of Dnipro-Buzka wind farm, Belgium’s SREW N.V., initiates arbitration against Ukraine

SREW N.V., an open joint-stock company registered in Belgium, which owns 75% of the charter capital of Dnipro-Buzka wind plant LLC, has initiated arbitration against Ukraine, it registered a request for arbitration with the International Center for Settlement of Investment Dispute (ICSID) on October 28, 2021.

According to information on the ICSID website, the Ministry of Energy, the Ministry of Justice and the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine have been identified as defendants in the claim.

The basis for the arbitration is the violation of BIT Belgium-Luxembourg - Ukraine 1996, an agreement between the government of Ukraine and the Belgian-Luxembourg Economic Union on mutual encouragement and protection of investments dated May 20, 1996, the report says.

Yuriy Kubrushko, the managing partner of Imepower consulting company, which also operates in the green energy market, noted that this is the second company from the renewable energy sector after Modus Energy International, which began a full-fledged arbitration against Ukraine this year.

At the same time, he drew attention to the difference in the reasons that contributed to the initiation of arbitrations.

"The main difference between the SREW N.V. case and the Modus case is that in the first case we are talking about a wind farm that could not be built due to the crisis in the renewable energy sector, and Modus disputes the deterioration of the working conditions of the already built solar power plants," Kubrushko explained.

According to information published on the website of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), on July 10, 2019, the EBRD board approved a loan for the implementation of the Dnipro-Buzka wind farm project in the amount of EUR51.8 million, but then the bank refused to finance the project. At the moment, the status of the implementation of the project for financing the construction of the Dnipro-Buzka wind farm with a total value of EUR179.488 million is listed on the EBRD website as "canceled."

source: Interfax