FELICITY II: Supporting resilient and climate-smart recovery in Ukraine

Four years after Russia’s full-scale inva­sion, Ukraine’s munic­i­pal­i­ties face the ongo­ing chal­lenge of restor­ing crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture while plan­ning for a sus­tain­able future. The FELICITY II pro­gramme sup­ports these efforts by work­ing direct­ly with cities and util­i­ties to devel­op invest­ment-ready projects that address both recov­ery and cli­mate goals. The pro­gramme advanced pilot ini­tia­tives in the hous­ing sec­tor, assist­ing cities such as Kryvyi Rih and Myko­laiv to devel­op a replic­a­ble high-qual­i­ty project pipeline of 20 build­ings in for the planned financ­ing by EIB, tak­ing into account its stan­dards as a cli­mate bank. The approach is to align with EU indus­try stan­dards and set a light­house exam­ple by pro­vid­ing a high lev­el of ener­gy effi­cien­cy recon­struc­tion of res­i­den­tial build­ings to demon­strate long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty and cli­mate impact.   

“The project design doc­u­men­ta­tion will ensure that recon­struc­tion works fol­low the “Build Back Bet­ter” prin­ci­ple. At the same time, mod­ern require­ments for ther­mal mod­erni­sa­tion, envi­ron­men­tal per­for­mance, and ener­gy effi­cien­cy will be ful­ly inte­grat­ed,” said Dmytro Bez­dol­nyi, Direc­tor of the Depart­ment of Hous­ing and Util­i­ties of Myko­laiv.

Envi­sioned tar­get: 

— Refur­bished build­ings expect­ed to achieve at least 60% improve­ment in ener­gy per­for­mance 

FELICITY II also col­lab­o­rates with water and waste­water util­i­ties across Ukraine to pre­pare invest­ment projects for recon­struc­tion and mod­erni­sa­tion of out­dat­ed or dam­aged infra­struc­ture, enhance insti­tu­tion­al readi­ness in project prepa­ra­tion, and incor­po­rate cli­mate risk into infra­struc­ture plan­ning. FELICITY II facil­i­tat­ed the sign­ing of the 100 MiO EIB Ukraine Water Recov­ery Loan, which has received 165 appli­ca­tions with a total val­ue exceed­ing 700 Mio EUR. In addi­tion to tech­ni­cal assis­tance, the pro­gramme pro­motes knowl­edge exchange and capac­i­ty devel­op­ment through train­ings, study vis­its, and sec­tor dia­logues.  

Envi­sioned tar­gets: 

— 5.7–9.7 mil­lion kWh saved annu­al­ly — as much as 8 hectares of solar pan­els can pro­duce in a year 

— CO₂ cuts (8400 tons/year) equal to plant­i­ng 140,000 trees; CH₄ and N₂O cuts up to 300 tons/year 

— Clean­er Dnipro, Psel and South­ern Bug rivers through bet­ter waste­water treat­ment 

— Improved life qual­i­ty for ~610,000 peo­ple, includ­ing ~46,000 IDPs 

By con­nect­ing Ukrain­ian munic­i­pal­i­ties with Euro­pean exper­tise and IFIs, FELICITY II sup­ports recon­struc­tion that advances imme­di­ate recov­ery, long-term resilience, cli­mate neu­tral­i­ty, and Ukraine’s EU inte­gra­tion. 

FELICITY II is imple­ment­ed by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Inter­na­tionale Zusam­me­nar­beit (GIZ) GmbH in coop­er­a­tion with the Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank and with the sup­port of the Ger­man Fed­er­al Min­istry for the Envi­ron­ment, Cli­mate Action, Nature Con­ser­va­tion and Nuclear Safe­ty, under the frame­work of the Inter­na­tion­al Cli­mate Ini­tia­tive (IKI).