Azerbaijan has great potential in renewable energy, President Ilham Aliyev said at an event titled "Restoring Trust in a Fragmented World: The South Caucasus as a Pillar of Global Connectivity and Investment Stability" held as part of the 2nd Azerbaijan International Investment Forum under his patronage in Baku.
"Only in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea, we have 157 gigawatts of power, plus onshore solar and wind farms already in operation. So our target is to reduce to a minimum the consumption of natural gas to generate power and to use that reserve for export. And renewables will be developed everywhere in Azerbaijan in the coming five years," the head of state emphasized.
Ilham Aliyev noted: "Less than two years ago we signed an agreement with Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to build a subsea electric cable from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan under the Caspian to connect Central Asia with Azerbaijan and then with Europe with electric energy. So that will need a lot of financing. Another important project, which is already in the post-feasibility-study phase, is a Black Sea cable, which will again come from Azerbaijan to Georgia and then Romania. It's a four-gigawatt electric cable, again heading towards the premium energy market. Energy storage—so all this is needed not only for us, but for broader international presence. So this, I think, could be the major areas of infrastructure concentration."
