On June 23 President Shavkat Mirziyoyev got acquainted with the presentation on the measures for ensuring major industrial enterprises with green energy.
With an aim to ensure the country’s economy with sustainable energy resources the green energy is developing at an accelerated pace in Uzbekistan. In a short period this sector attracted over $6 billion of foreign direct investments. The volume of electricity production increased from 59 billion to 82 billion kilowatt-hours per year.
It’s expected that the population of Uzbekistan will exceed 41 million people by 2030, and the volume of economy – $200 billion. This will require a significant increase of energy capacities. In this regard, measures are being taken to widely utilize renewable energy sources.
Information on current projects and plans for the near future were presented. Main priorities – generation development, modernization and increasing energy efficiency.
Thus, this year it’s planned to launch 12 solar and 4 wind power plants, as well as 12 systems for energy storage. The total volume of investments for these projects is over $5 billion, the aggregate capacity – over 9 billion kilowatt-hours. Additionally, the construction of additional 11 projects worth $7.2 billion will begin.
Along with the production of electricity, its rational utilization is of great importance. The Head of State has set a task to reduce losses and install energy efficient equipment, especially at large industrial enterprises.
The share of 18 sectors of the economy accounts for one third of the total electricity consumption in the country. For example, pumps in the water management system alone consume 6.5 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually.
In this regard, 12 large pumps will be modernized with the installation of a 75-100 megawatt solar power plant and a 50 megawatt storage system next to each of them. As a result, the annual energy consumption of the pumps will be reduced by 2 billion kilowatt-hours – from 6.5 to 4.5 billion. Primarily, these works will begin at the Karshi main canal, where the cost of water supply is particularly high.
The oil and gas enterprises also have an opportunity to generate at least 600 million kilowatt-hours of electricity annually by installing photovoltaic stations with a capacity of 240 megawatts and storage systems for 300 megawatts.
In general, measures to transfer 18 industries with high energy consumption to the autonomous power supply system were considered at the meeting. Information was also provided on the work on utilization of solar energy in social institutions.