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USAID supporting Kazakhstan in increasing renewable energy capacities

Oil&Gas Materials 26 June 2020 15:12 (UTC +04:00)
USAID supporting Kazakhstan in increasing renewable energy capacities

BAKU, Azerbaijan, Jun. 26

By Nargiz Sadikhova - Trend:

US Agency for International Development (USAID) supports the Kazakhstan’s government’s goals of increasing renewable energy (RE) capacities in the country, a USAID representative told Trend.

The USAID official noted that Kazakhstan’s Government, in its ‘Green Economy Concept’, set renewable energy targets of 3 percent share of RE by 2020; 10 percent share of RE by 2030; and 50 percent by 2050.

“USAID’s supports the government’s goals of increasing RE and to improve policy and regulatory framework and to create an enabling environment for a greater private investment,” the official said.

Talking results of this cooperation the official said that USAID’s assistance has led to dramatic increases in new RE projects that are being built by private companies with the costs of electricity to the consumers being lower than the prevailing costs of electricity.

“Thus far, over 1,200 megawatts of generation capacity has been added through the government’s efforts, enough to supply electricity to about half a million to 1 million households,” the official said.

USAID is providing assistance to all the Central Asian countries and has been working with Kazakhstan for several years. As a result, the Kazakh government has taken significant steps on policy reforms to enable greater private investment in new RE projects.

Based on some estimates, country’s potential for solar energy production ranges from 3.9 to 5.4 billion WH per year, whereas the ‘ceiling’ of wind power is 920 billion kWh per year.

As of the end of 2019, 90 RES (renewable energy source) facilities of 1,050 MW of capacity were operating in Kazakhstan including 19 wind parks (283.8 MW), 31 solar parks (541.7 MW), 37 hydropower plants (222.2 MW) and three biopower plants. This year, the number of RES facilities is to be increased from 90 to 108 with the total capacity of 1,655 MW.

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