"Azerbaijan expects 6 to 8 gigawatts of electric power from renewable sources," President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev stated during his speech at the 12th Ministerial Meeting of the Southern Gas Corridor Advisory Council and the 4th Ministerial Meeting of the Green Energy Advisory Council.
President Ilham Aliyev said:
"Part of the discussions for several years at the Advisory Council has been the green agenda. And here also we can report good results. This January, we inaugurated the biggest wind power station in the region so far — 240 megawatts — financed and constructed by ACWA Power.
This is an additional source of green energy to what we already had. In 2023, Masdar built a 230-megawatt solar power station. Several projects are already in the implementation phase, and we expect the inauguration of new renewable power stations in the coming years. Here, we have a good combination of foreign investors and local companies. Local companies, definitely SOCAR, but not only SOCAR — private companies have also started to invest in renewables because we know that there is great potential and market demand.
There are already transmission lines, but there will be more transmission lines. We need to work on that. We need to work jointly on energy cables, including the energy cable stretching from Azerbaijan to Europe across the Black Sea and the energy cable from Central Asia to Azerbaijan. Both agreements have been signed. The feasibility study has almost been completed for one project and will be completed for the other.
If we look forward to when all these projects are materialized, we will see that they will be very sustainable and, I would say, existential for many countries' energy corridors. Our renewable plans are based on contracts that have already been signed.
I would like to underline that they are contracts, not MOUs — so they are contractual obligations. By 2032, we expect 6 to 8 gigawatts of electric power from renewable sources. This, of course, is a big asset. We need to export it and use this electricity for domestic purposes to substitute the natural gas that we are currently using to produce electricity and to provide conditions for a growing economy and growing industry, including our plans with respect to the communications sector, AI, and data centers — all of which are projects already in the pipeline, especially after the signing last month here in Baku between the Vice President of the United States and myself of the Charter on Strategic Partnership between the United States and Azerbaijan, which covers many areas, including AI, energy, connectivity, and many others.
So the realization of our plans, having the United States — the biggest power — as our strategic partner seems to be absolutely realistic. We have been investing and continue to invest in hydropower stations. These projects are being implemented in the territories liberated from Armenian occupation. So far, 307 megawatts of hydropower stations have already joined our system. Our plans are to almost double that, maybe in two or three years, which will give us additional potential and cheap energy.
So hydro, solar, wind, potentially thermal — we are now investigating this issue — gas, and all the combinations — that is how it should be. Coming back to what we discussed even at COP29, when we were hosting this climate conference, I said then — though I realized it was not in line with the trend at that time — that you cannot ignore fossil fuels. If you ignore fossil fuels, that means you live in your dreams."
