Officials in Mykolaiv are hoping that the EIB will fund the energy-efficiency upgrades of 10 buildings, for which plans are currently being drawn up

A building on the waterfront in Mykolaiv, which is taking part in the international FELICITY II programme. Photo: ‘NikVesti’

The City Council’s Department of Housing and Communal Services expects that, once the project documentation for the energy modernisation of 10 apartment blocks under the FELICITY II project has been drawn up, the construction work will be funded by the European Investment Bank.

This is reported in the article by NikVesti entitled «From Door-to-Door Talks to Rebuilding: Mykolaiv’s European-Funded Project in Action».

As is known, under the European FELICITY II programme, energy modernisation projects for the buildings are to be developed for the residents of 10 blocks, and the city must subsequently secure funding for the works.

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The Department of Housing and Communal Services says they plan to carry out the renovations with the support of the European Investment Bank.

«The mechanism is currently at the stage of approval by the Ministry of Community and Territorial Development of Ukraine and the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine,» they clarified.

If this option does not work out, «VidnovyDim» is being considered as an alternative. This is a grant programme run by the Energy Efficiency Fund, which provides funding only to housing associations.

However, the development of the building modernisation projects themselves will take at least another year – until July 2027, according to the Department of Housing and Communal Services. This process has already begun.

«The selection of the project organisation was carried out by the team implementing the project in cooperation with GIZ. The German Energy Agency (DENA) was also brought in as European-level experts,» said the Mykolaiv Department of Housing and Communal Services.

FELICITY II helps cities prepare large-scale reconstruction projects so that international banks will provide funding for them. The programme is supported by the European Investment Bank and the German government. It is being implemented by the German state organisation GIZ.

And what about housing reconstruction under HOPE?

In 2025, it was announced that Mykolaiv would receive 150 million hryvnias from the World Bank to develop design and cost estimates for the restoration of apartment blocks as part of the «HOPE: Housing Repair for Empowerment and Opportunities» project. The design work will be carried out not on a building-by-building basis, but in clusters. Each of the 21 clusters comprises between 2 and 5 multi-storey buildings that have been damaged.

Initially, the plan was to develop reconstruction designs for 54 buildings, but this number is now being increased to 69.

NikVesti asked the city authorities whether they would manage to rebuild the residential buildings according to the developed plans before the projects’ validity period expires. They replied that they were not sure whether they would manage to rebuild all the buildings by 2027. However, Mykolaiv’s mayor, Oleksandr Sienkevych, expects that once the project documentation for the restoration of the high-rise buildings has been drawn up, the World Bank will also finance their reconstruction.

Read also the article NikVesti «Reconstruction or just paperwork: how Mykolaiv will spend the World Bank’s 150 million hryvnias»

It later emerged that this list included at least four buildings for which design and cost estimate documentation had already been drawn up — this is discussed in the NikVesti article «Projects for the reconstruction of four buildings in Mykolaiv will be commissioned twice: Why this happened and how the authorities will avoid duplication».

The Department of Housing and Communal Services explained that the projects already developed by the city include stabilisation measures, whereas the HOPE project focuses on energy efficiency and urban regeneration. «In any case, our projects are more limited in scope than those to be developed under HOPE,» they added.

As of November 2027, tenders were ongoing to select contractors for the major refurbishment of the apartment blocks included in the HOPE project. Work on the refurbishment of 54 high-rise buildings under the HOPE project is scheduled to begin by November 2027.