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On April 12, the Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers of the Kyrgyz Republic, Akylbek Japarov unveiled plans for the construction of a solar power plant near Balykchy in the country’s northern Issyk-Kul region. Financed with an investment of $400 million by a Chinese company, the plant will have a capacity of 400 megawatts and should be operational by the end of 2025. At the celebratory launch, Japarov stated that the Cabinet of Ministers has made the harness of solar energy, wind, and biogas technologies a key priority, and applauded progressive initiatives which over the past two years, include large-scale hydroelectric power plants Kambarata (HPP)-1, Kulanak HPP and Bala-Saruu HPP, as well as hundreds of smaller hydroelectric power stations nationwide. “Our goal is to achieve energy independence. The first stage of work on Kambarata HPP-1 has been completed, and work is currently underway to update its feasibility. Once in operation, it will become the largest hydropower nation in the region.”
According to Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Energy, in 2023, the volume of electricity generated by renewable energy facilities reached 6.675 billion kWh or 5.92% of the country’s total electricity. Kazakhstan currently boasts 147 renewable energy facilities including 59 wind power plants with a capacity of 1,409.55 MW, 46 solar power plants with a capacity of 1,222.61 MW, 39 hydroelectric power plants with a capacity of 269.6 MW, and three biogas power plants with a capacity of 1.7 MW. In 2023, sixteen renewable energy facilities with a total installed capacity of 495.57 MW were put into operation, including 12 wind farms with a total capacity of 437.1 MW in the Akmola and Zhetisu regions, 2 hydroelectric power plants with a total capacity of 3.7 MW in the Almaty and Turkestan regions, and 2 solar power plants with a capacity 54.77 MW in the Turkestan region. Kazakhstan is forecast to commission a further 25 renewable energy facilities with a total capacity of 599.85 MW by 2027.
On March 26th, at the 13th ATOMEXPO 2024 International Forum in Sochi, Russia, Kyrgyzstan’s Ministry of Energy and Russia’s State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom announced joint investment in the construction of renewable energy facilities in Kyrgyzstan with a capacity of up to 1 GW. The agreement was signed by Grigory Nazarov, General Director of the Wind Energy Division of Rosatom; Talaibek Baigaziev, Deputy Minister of Energy of the Kyrgyz Republic, and Dmitry Konstantinov General Director of Rosatom’s office in Kyrgyzstan. According to Rosatom, the first stage of the project will involve the implementation of a pilot project for the construction of a wind power plant with a capacity of 100 MW in Kyrgyzstan’s Issyk-Kul region. The Russian company has already installed a mast for wind measurement and is undertaking surveys on the location of wind farms. The second stage will include the development of additional sites for renewable energy facilities with a total capacity of up to 900 MW.
A wind power plant with a capacity of 500 MW is being built by the UAE company Masdar in Uzbekistan’s Navoi region. The first 100 MW of the plant was put into operation in December 2023, and since then the wind farm has generated 31 million kWh of electricity – equivalent to the monthly consumption of over 150,000 Uzbek households, the Ministry of Energy has said. During this short period, the wind farm has saved 9.4 million cubic meters of natural gas and prevented the emission of 13,000 tons of harmful substances into the atmosphere. The next 200 MW of the wind farm will be commissioned before the end of this year, and it will be operational at full design capacity in 2025. Wind turbines with a capacity of 4.7 MW from China’s Goldwind are being installed at the site. To date, 34 of a total of 111 turbines have been installed.
At a February 6th meeting between Kazakhstan’s minister for energy, Almasadam Satkaliev, and the country’s British ambassador Kathy Leach, it was announced that the United Kingdom is ready to work with Kazakhstan on developing wind and solar energy projects. Great Britain may also support Kazakhstan in strengthening the country’s electrical networks, switching its coal-fired industrial plants to gas, and conducting research in the field of hydrogen energy, biogas and carbon capture technologies. These updates were provided by the Kazakh Energy Ministry. The British embassy informed the ministry of the UK Fund for Climate, Energy and Water Security for Central Asia, totaling almost £20m ($25.2m), to be used over a three-year period. At the meeting Mr Satkaliev presented Kazakhstan’s plans for gradually decarbonizing its economy, as part of its target to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. Ambassador Leach emphasized that Kazakhstan joining the Global Methane Pledge, which president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev announced at COP-28 in December 2023, creates many more opportunities for the country to attract financing for low-carbon technology projects.
As part of a government program to encourage the installation of low-power solar panels (up to 50 kW) in households in regions of Uzbekistan, citizens are to be provided with a subsidy for electrical energy produced by solar panels. For electricity produced by solar panels installed on properties and facilities owned by individuals, a subsidy of 1,000 Uzbek som (0.081U$) is to be allocated for every kilowatt-hour of surplus electrical energy transferred to the national power grid, the Uzbek Energy Ministry said. Persons who have installed renewable energy sources are also exempt from land tax and property tax. Individuals and legal entities who have installed renewable energy sources with a total capacity of up to 100 kW are exempt from paying the property tax from such devices, land tax on plots occupied by devices, and profit tax for electricity sold by legal entities to the national power grid for a period of three years from the date of their commissioning and when installing electricity storage systems with a capacity of at least 25% of the installed capacity of solar panels for ten years. In recent years, Uzbekistan has experienced increasing electricity shortages, especially in the cold winter months, as the country’s population grows and natural gas reserves are depleting. This has prompted the Uzbek government to embark on a large-scale program to introduce renewable energy sources (wind and solar power plants).
