BAKU, Azerbaijan, March 14. Demand for electricity supplies from Azerbaijan to Europe will grow, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said at a meeting with heads of leading German companies in Berlin, Trend reports.
"Maximum, as far as I remember, there is kind of 1,000 megawatt or maybe 1,500 megawatts of the transmission capabilities through Georgia and Türkiye. In both countries, in Georgia and Türkiye there are bottlenecks. Therefore, there must be additional investments in these two countries to expand the capability for transmission. Especially, taking into account that last December in Bucharest agreement was signed between Azerbaijan, Georgia, Romania and Hungary to build a subsea cable under the Black Sea to transport green energy from Azerbaijan to Europe. And this February in Baku, we already had the first steering committee of this project with participation of the ministers from these countries and also Commissioner on Energy of European Commission. And we agreed at the first meeting that it will be integrated project, not like Southern Gas Corridor, where we had South Caucasus pipeline, TANAP and TAP. This will be integrated projects from offshore wind farms in the Caspian to the European consumers. The first stage of transmission under the Black Sea is planned to be at the level of four gigawatts. But for that, we need to have transmission lines expanded in Georgia. Otherwise, it will be absolutely useless. Plus, I will tell later about our plans and the contracts and MoUs, which has already been signed by us. We think that four gigawatts is only the beginning. We know the demand in Europe. We know the demand in Germany. I think the figures are tens of gigawatts of demand, and the demand will grow. Therefore, we have this capacity. We need just to assemble all the puzzles on the table," President Ilham Aliyev said.