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In liberated territories there is potential of 9,200 MW of solar and wind energy - President Ilham Aliyev

Politics Materials 29 April 2022 11:45 (UTC +04:00)
In liberated territories there is potential of 9,200 MW of solar and wind energy - President Ilham Aliyev

BAKU, Azerbaijan, April 29. According to preliminary information, in the liberated areas we have a potential of 9200 megawatts of solar and wind energy, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said addressing the international conference under the motto “South Caucasus: Development and Cooperation”, Trend reports.

"Several years ago, we started slowly to evaluate our potential and after liberation in Karabakh, of course, that area was also evaluated. According to preliminary information, in the liberated areas we have a potential of 9200 megawatts of solar and wind energy. Unfortunately, after Armenia signed the capitulation act on 10 November 2020, they used these twenty-day time when they had to leave Kalbajar for destruction and they, apart from houses and trees, destructed 30 hydro power stations. Can you imagine? They used the time which we gave to them to collect their belongings and to go for destruction. Now, everything is documented.

So, we started the reconstruction in Kalbajar and in Tartar. So, as I said before, 20 megawatts have already been commissioned and 25 megawatts will be this year. But this is only hydro and there is more potential for hydro. For solar and wind in Karabakh, we are now in the final stage of negotiations with BP on a 240-megawatt solar power plant in Jabrayil and also with international companies about 100 megawatt of a wind power plant in Kalbajar. But apart from that, starting from January this year, we already had two important events – two groundbreaking ceremonies to build two, one solar and one wind power station with total capacity of 430 megawatts by Saudi Arabia’s leading company in that area, Aquapower, and another project by the company from the UAE, Masdar. This is really a big contribution to our energy system and a big sign and demonstration of attractiveness of Azerbaijan.

We are now evaluating finally the potential of the Caspian Sea with respect to wind power stations. Preliminary figures are really enormous, so we will need to have a very thorough study about that. As far as Karabakh is concerned, I already announced it a green energy zone and that will be the case – smart city and green energy zone. I think if all what we plan, I don’t want to go into much detail, is implemented, we will not only have a substantial part of our energy coming from wind and sun, we have a target of 30%, but I think it can go to 50% and more, but also, what is important, we will save a lot of natural gas for export, which is also needed. Just these two power stations, which I mentioned, by Aquapower and Masdar, will save about 400 million cubic meters of gas. It is not a big amount, but for some countries, it is a substantial amount.

But, also what we do, we are now in the process of active reforms of SOCAR. There is new management in SOCAR. SOCAR will finally transform into a transparent international energy company, I am sure, because the new management has these instructions. Subsequently, there will be reduction in losses, because we have a lot of losses in gas. Some losses are justified because of the outdated infrastructure, but some losses are very suspicious. So, I am sure that optimization, transparency and corporate management of our leading company SOCAR will give us an additional source. It already gives us, I just don’t want to talk about it before it happened and before you have official figures, but we really have a potential to substitute a large part of our energy, which comes from gas, to solar and wind. Also, just going a little bit further from you asked, we are already evaluating the opportunity of joining the project between Georgia and Romania, the electric cable under the Black Sea, which will be primarily used by us, because we have extra production – we export electric energy now to four countries and have a plan to expand. And, our electric energy is needed in Europe along with our gas," the head of state said.

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