Uzbekistan, Going Green

At a regional Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) summit this summer in Almaty, Kazakhstan, energy was but one of a litany of focus areas for those aspiring to engender a “just recovery” after the COVID-19 pandemic. UNDP Associate Administrator Usha Rao-Monari said that in order to achieve the SDGs by 2030, “This will require investment in people, expansion of social protection, provision of quality education, creation of decent jobs, transition to renewable energy, and ensuring digitalisation for all.” With only eight years left until the much-discussed 2030 deadline, Central Asia has a lot of work to do to switch to more renewable energy sources.

For Uzbekistan, renewable and clean energy have become part of a major policy and development push. The country, with an estimated population of over 34 million, will face escalating energy demands in the coming years. With a much more balanced economy and energy profile than oil and gas-dependent Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan stands to be a leader in Central Asia’s energy transformation.

At the summit this summer, Uzbek Prime Minister Abdulla Aripov said that Tashkent intends to build its renewable energy source (RES) generation capacity to more than 8 GW.

According to the International Energy Agency, as of 2018 Uzbekistan’s total renewable energy capacity was 1.8 GW, covering around 3 percent of total energy consumption. By 2030, Uzbekistan aims for RES to represent a quarter of its electricity generation, up from 10 percent in 2018.

Uzbekistan’s green energy aims target three areas: water, solar, and wind.

Hydropower forms the bulk of Uzbekistan’s present RES capacity, with increased investments and cooperation with neighboring Tajikistan promising to boost supply. For example, in June Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev and Tajik President Emomali Rahmon pressed a symbolic button together in Tashkent marking the launch of construction on the Yavan hydroelectric power station on the Zarafshan River in Tajikistan. The project, with roots over a decade old, is the first concrete piece of bilateral energy cooperation between the two states.

During the same trip, the two sides signed a memorandum of intent under which Uzbekistan will import electricity during the summer months from Tajikistan’s Rogun dam. It’s quite a paradigm shift from a decade ago. Uzbekistan’s previous president, Islam Karimov, stridently opposed the construction of Rogun, infamously warning of water wars to come: “I won’t name specific countries,” Karimov said during 2012 a trip to the Kazakh capital, though he was most certainly referring to Tajikistan, “but all of this could deteriorate to the point where not just serious confrontation, but even wars could be the result.”

According to the IEA, Uzbekistan aims to grow its hydropower capacity from 24.1 MW in 2019 to 1.5 GW by 2030.

The bulk of Uzbekistan’s RES potential lies in solar power, given the country’s “favorable climate and geographical location,” the IEA states. And it’s in solar power that Uzbekistan has engaged in some of its most ambitious plans and most private-sector engagement.

As of 2019, Uzbekistan generated no energy via solar power. By the end of 2020, the country had just 4 MW of grid connected solar capacity; that grew to 104 MW by the end of 2021. In July 2022, four years after Mirziyoyev first signed an agreement with French company Total Eren for solar power development in Uzbekistan, the company commissioned the Tutly solar farm near Samarkand with an expected peak generation capacity of 131 MW.

These solar power efforts have generated considerable international support. The Tutly solar farm, for example, was financed by a trio of European bodies: the European Investment Bank (EIB) provided a 43.7 million euro loan, plus 21.8 million euro loans from both the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and Proparco, a development financing agency partly owned by the French Development Agency.

Another area of great potential, and recent developments, is wind power. In mid-August, during a state visit by Mirziyoyev to Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan’s Ministry of Energy and a Saudi Arabian power generation company, ACWA Power, signed three major energy agreements, worth a total of $12 billion. Of those agreements, one related to a 1.5 GW wind farm to be built in Karakalpakstan. Uzbek authorities advertised it as the largest single onshore wind project in the world.

Later in August, Tashkent marked the financial close of another wind deal: a 500 MW wind farm near Zarafshan in the country’s central Navoiy region. Masdar, a United Arab Emirates-based company, is building the facility and is also contracted to develop an additional 890 MW of solar capacity at sites in Samarkand, Jizzakh, and Sherabad. Commercial operations at the Zarafshan wind farm are expected to commence in 2024 and it will be Central Asia’s largest wind farm – that is, until the Saudi project is realized.

One final area of renewable energy worth touching upon is nuclear power. In 2017, Uzbekistan signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with Russia’s state-owned nuclear corporation, Rosatom. The following year, Tashkent announced its intentions to construct its first nuclear power plant with Russian assistance. The $11 billion nuclear power plant was planned with Rosatom developing the project and Moscow providing a loan to cover at least some of the costs. In 2019, a site in Jizzakh region was chosen for the plant and a contract (and construction) was said to be imminent.

But as with nuclear power projects the world over, the plans drew considerable criticism from environmental activists  and neighboring states concerned about accidents and leaks. Meanwhile, Uzbek authorities and Rosatom are still bickering over the price tag and responsibilities, with RFE/RL reporting in June 2022 that the Uzbek government was still negotiating costs with Rosatom. The construction contract that was supposed to be signed in 2019 has not been settled yet. Nevertheless, Uzbek energy and atomic agency officials maintain that the first unit will be put into operation in 2028, and the second in 2030.

The Russian war in Ukraine may further derail Uzbekistan’s nuclear power ambitions. To date, the United States has not sanctioned Rosatom (although Ukraine has), but that could change in the coming months as the Russian invasion persists. Even without Rosatom being specifically targeted by sanctions, such close cooperation with Russia is difficult politically and from the Russian side, the loans it may have offered in 2019 are now – after the pandemic and amid a war – perhaps less feasible.

Ultimately, Uzbekistan does not need Russian assistance when it comes to renewable energy writ large. There are plenty of partners, from the Gulf to Europe to the United States, that are interested in investing in renewable energy projects. One actor conspicuously absent in Uzbekistan’s growing renewable sector, at present, is China.

Back in 2016 it looked like the Shandong-based China Shuifa Singyes Energy Holdings would partner with Uzbekistan to operate a solar farm intended for Samarkand – the Asian Development Bank had agreed three years earlier to finance the project. But by 2017, Tashkent bailed on the project, claiming the 100 MW solar farm was too ambitious. Three years later, in 2020, a project of the same size and at the same site was pitched to the EBRD and, as noted above, France’s Total Eren took on the project.