Three Days at 8 Degrees or Below: Ukraine’s Rule for Turning On the Heat

In many Ukrainian cities, heat produced at boiler plants or combined heat-and-power plants is turned into hot water and piped to apartment buildings for both heating and hot water. In legal texts this arrangement is called “centralized heat supply” (централізоване теплопостачання). We refer to it here as district heating.

Every autumn, the question of when the heat will come on becomes a topic of conversation. The rule is set out in the “Rules for Providing the Service of Supplying Thermal Energy” adopted by Cabinet of Ministers Resolution No. 830 of August 21, 2019. This article looks, based on the legal texts as of September 2026, at who decides on tariffs and how the rule is being handled under wartime conditions, alongside when heating begins.

“8 Degrees or Below for Three Days” Is a Deadline, Not a Trigger

Clause 8 of the Rules provides that heat for heating is to be supplied during the “heating period.” The start and end of that period are decided by local self-government bodies, taking climate conditions into account and following building codes, the technical operating rules for heat equipment, and sanitary norms.

Clause 8 goes on to say that the heating period begins “no later than when the average daily temperature has been 8 degrees or below for three days,” and ends “no earlier than when the average daily temperature has exceeded 8 degrees for three days.” Rather than being the signal to start heating, 8 degrees is the deadline by which heating must have started. Local authorities may start it earlier than that.

On October 13, 2025, the government ministry then responsible (the Ministry for Development of Communities and Territories) announced that reports the government had decided the heating period would run from November 1 to March 31 were untrue. According to the ministry, what Cabinet of Ministers Resolution No. 1267 of October 8, 2025, set as November 1 to March 31 was the period during which heat producers are supplied gas at a fixed price, not the heating period itself. By the time of that announcement, heating had already begun, at the discretion of local authorities, at kindergartens, schools, and hospitals in 15 oblasts and the city of Kyiv.

The Rules and Who Decides Them

How Many Households Use District Heating?

“A Third” and “Six in Ten”: What Is Being Counted

The share of households using district heating differs from one source to another.

• A September 2024 report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) cites State Statistics Service figures that just over a third of Ukrainian households were connected to district heating networks in 2022.
• Materials from the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) state that in 2021 about 250 operators supplied heat to about 26 million people, roughly 60% of the population.
• The Ukrainian research project Green Deal Ukraïna cites European Commission figures showing that in 2021 more than 30% of households had district heating, against an EU average of 12%.

The figures change depending on whether households or people are counted. District heating is concentrated in larger cities, and there are large regional differences. Green Deal Ukraïna’s chart puts Zakarpattia Oblast at 0% and Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast at 10%. The share for Kyiv is covered in our article on attacks on the power grid.

Who Decides the Tariffs?

Article 20 of the Law on Heat Supply (2005, No. 2633-IV) provides that heat tariffs must cover all economically justified costs of production, transport, and supply, and that the tariffs of operators with a dominant market position are regulated tariffs. Tariffs are decided by the National Energy and Utilities Regulatory Commission (NEURC) and local self-government bodies, each within the powers assigned to it by law.

Article 13 of the same law provides that local self-government bodies decide heat tariffs for all consumers, but excludes from this heat produced at combined heat-and-power plants, thermal power plants, nuclear power plants, and cogeneration facilities.

Much of this heat is produced from gas. According to the IEA’s 2024 report, roughly 70% of heat production runs on gas, and about a third of heat is produced at combined heat-and-power plants. The government has heat producers supplied with gas at a fixed price; according to the responsible ministry, the price for the portion of gas used to produce heat for households from November 2025 to March 2026 was UAH 7,420 per 1,000 cubic meters (VAT included). Household gas is covered in our article on gas, and winter tariffs for households that heat with electricity are covered in our article on household electricity prices.

The Ban on Tariff Increases Under Martial Law

Article 1 of Law No. 2479-IX of July 29, 2022 (on special features of regulating relations in the natural gas market and in the field of heat supply during martial law) bans raising the tariffs for household thermal energy (production, transport, and supply), the heat-supply service, and hot water, for the duration of martial law and for six months from the month martial law ends. It also bans raising the household gas distribution tariff, and provides that the price of household gas must not exceed the price as of February 24, 2022. Articles 2 and 3 of the same law address how the difference arising from these freezes is to be treated.

As of September 2026, the Verkhovna Rada’s legal database shows this law as “in force” (the latest version dated August 28, 2025). Martial law was extended by Presidential Decree No. 596/2026 of July 13, 2026, for 90 days from 5:30 a.m. on August 2, and approved by Law No. 4928-IX of July 14. If the text is followed, the freeze on household heat tariffs was still in effect as of September 2026.

The July 2026 Amendment and Preparations for This Winter

Law No. 4937-IX of July 15, 2026, amended the Law on Heat Supply and other laws. According to a Verkhovna Rada announcement, its main pillars are supporting district heating as a field of national interest, requiring buildings connected to district heating to install building-level heat-exchange equipment (individual heat substations), and reworking how tariffs are set. Under the amended Article 13 of the Law on Heat Supply, approving regional plans for installing individual heat substations is added to the role of local self-government bodies.

On September 7, 2026, the Ministry for Restoration, Infrastructure and Transport announced that, of the roughly 144,000 residential buildings planned for readiness ahead of the 2026/27 heating season, more than 114,000—79.2% of the plan—and 14,194 boiler facilities (about 83% of the plan) had been prepared.

Attacks on Combined Heat-and-Power Plants

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion, it has repeatedly attacked combined heat-and-power plants and boiler facilities. The IEA’s 2024 report cites a tally by the Kyiv School of Economics that 18 large combined heat-and-power plants were damaged or destroyed between February 2022 and May 2024; the scale of the attacks and the heating outages in the winter of 2025–26 are covered in our article on attacks on the power grid.