Renewable Energy in Occupied Territories: Key Legal Insights

In the latest edition of The Debrief by CEE Legal Matters, Practice Leaders across the CEE region share insights on legislative updates, key court decisions, and major developments shaping their practice areas.

As part of this issue, LCF Law Group Partner Iryna Kobets highlights one of the most pressing challenges for Ukraine’s energy sector since the start of the full-scale invasion.

With the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, approximately 30% of Ukraine’s solar power plants and nearly 80% of its wind generation capacity found themselves located in temporarily occupied territories. Ukraine operates a unified national power system, which includes solar and wind power plants integrated into the common regime of generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity.

Despite the occupation, many renewable energy facilities continued to generate electricity and feed it into Ukraine’s unified grid. Correspondingly, payments for this electricity continued to be made.

In 2023, however, due to legal uncertainty regarding whether power plants located on occupied territories remained part of Ukraine’s integrated power system, payments to renewable energy producers in those areas were suspended. The suspension remains in place until de-occupation, when it becomes possible to verify the actual volumes of electricity generated for the Ukrainian power system, rather than for the energy systems operating under the control of the occupying authorities.

This gave rise to a series of disputes regarding payments for electricity generated in 2022–2023, which have been litigated in Ukrainian courts for several years. The Supreme Court had previously indicated that the “annulment” of metering data for past periods lacked legal grounds, and therefore recalculation of payments was unwarranted.

On 3 October 2025, the Joint Chamber of the Commercial Cassation Court of the Supreme Court, in case No. 908/1162/23, issued a decision that may significantly reshape the approach to this category of disputes.

Ukrainian legislation provides that, for the duration of temporary occupation, any transfer of electricity via transmission lines between occupied territories and the rest of Ukraine is prohibited. The controversial issue was whether a separate decision of the Cabinet of Ministers was required to apply this restriction to territories occupied after 24 February 2022.

The Supreme Court concluded that the legal status of a temporarily occupied territory does not depend on whether (or when) a competent authority has formally adopted a decision recognizing it as such. What matters is whether Russian armed forces and occupation administration have established and exercised effective, or general, control over that territory with the clear intention of establishing an occupation administration.

This ruling may lead to a reconsideration of payments previously made to solar and wind power plants for electricity generated during 2022–2023, and may reshape ongoing and future litigation involving renewable energy facilities located in temporarily occupied territories.

Read the full November Debrief.