While electricity produced by DTEK's coal-fired power plants for exports is relatively cheap, it comes at a great environmental and health cost. None of the coal-fired power plants in Ukraine have any SOx and NOx pollution controls, while particulate matter emissions currently exceed limits set by the EU's Large Combustion Plants Directive by up to 45 times.

Two power plants in Western Ukraine (Burstyn and Dobrotvir) use a significant portion of their capacity for electricity exports to EU member countries - Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Poland - which would not be allowed to host these plants.

Burshtyn thermal power plant in the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast was identified in 2005 as one of the major environmental health hazards in western Ukraine, associated with increased respiratory illness from high levels of fine particulate exposure. Exploitation of Burstyn coal plant without proper pollution control systems is causing severe air pollution in the Ivano-Frankovsk region with unknown health and environmental effects. A recent study, aimed at assessment and quantification of such effects, shows a lack of access to environmental information in Ukraine.

In general environmental data collection in Ukraine follows sporadically-available funding patterns, leading to a lack of consistency and continuity, and an inability to draw specific conclusions about the levels of air pollution produced by coal plants and  inflicted health damage. But If one were to put a price tag on the health impacts caused by DTEK’s obsolete power plants it is difficult to imagine that company would like to communicate this cost to population.

See also this study: Dusting off Ukraine's energy sector - Why the country must address inefficiency and pollution at its ageing coal-fired power plants.

DTEK holding is the energy division of System Capital Management (SCM), a corporation created and privately owned by Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, who has long been plagued by accusations of corruption and ties to organised crime. No official information exists about what Rinat Leonidovich was actually doing until 1995 before he acquired the image of a major industrialist and financier. The business circles linked to Rinat Akhmetov were the principal financial base of the Party of Regions, a ruling party under Victor Yanukovych, who has the rare distinction of having been ousted twice from Ukraine's presidency after giant street protests. Almost half of the members of parliament from the Party of Regions were people linked to Akhmetov.

Under the Yanukovich regime DTEK had the potential to become a private energy monopoly as a result of the privatisation of Ukrainian state-owned thermal power plants. Moreover, Akhmetov's interests were directly represented in the Yanukovich government by Borys Kolesnikov, the deputy prime minister in charge of Euro 2012 and the minister of infrastructure, whose main task was to prepare Ukraine for the European football championship (and control spending of the budget of Euro 2012, the estimated value of which was US$7.6 billion).