Uzbekistan has unveiled more than 40 new renewable energy projects worth around €9.6bn, including generation, storage, and network facilities.
The country’s president, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, announced the new projects at the “Powering the Future: Sustainable Energy for New Uzbekistan” forum in Tashkent last week.
The plans include 16 renewable solar, wind and hydroelectricity generation projects with a combined capacity of 3500 MW.
These will be supported by 11 new substations, 420km of high voltage transmission lines and 10 utility-scale energy storage systems with a total storage capacity of 1245 MW.
Uzbekistan has been investing heavily in its energy infrastructure since 2017 and the government claims that the country’s green energy production will reach 23 billion kilowatt-hours as soon as 2026.
That would be enough to cover all of the country’s current consumption, though demand is also expected to rise sharply in the coming years.
“Given the rapid growth of the economy and the increasing needs of the population, we are implementing large-scale reforms in the energy sector,” said Mirziyoyev.
“In this area, we have defined two key goals. The first is to ensure reliable and uninterrupted energy supply to all industries and regions. The second is to achieve this primarily through modern, environmentally friendly, and renewable energy sources.
“All the projects we are launching today will become a source of sustainable economic growth and open new opportunities for future generations. Thanks to such purposeful steps, we will undoubtedly build a modern energy system of a new type.”
The developments are being supported by a mix of public and private funding, with companies from Saudi Arabia, Turkiye, the UAE, China, France and Qatar among those involved.
Uzbekistan is the largest country in central Asia by population and has achieved an average GDP growth rate of over 5% since 2017, which makes it a top recent performer on this metric among lower-middle-income countries.
