Final November, when Azerbaijan hosted COP29, the United Nations’ annual local weather summit, it was a kind of coming-out social gathering for the nation. Organizers wished to showcase how their small nation of practically 11 million, on the western shore of the Caspian Sea, had advanced over its three a long time of independence and was able to play a task on the planet’s vitality transition.
Held in Baku’s Olympic Stadium, COP29’s headline talks have been largely a flop. The U.N. didn’t persuade developed nations to decide to giving growing ones over US$1 trillion yearly. However in a side room away from media consideration, a distinct local weather dialogue concluded extra auspiciously.
There, delegations from Azerbaijan, Georgia, Hungary, and Romania finalized an formidable plan: to generate as much as 6 gigawatts of unpolluted vitality within the Caucasus area, run the electrical energy by way of a cable alongside the underside of the Black Sea, and ship it to Europe. The nations hope to complete a primary part of the challenge, comprising two cables with a capability of 1.3 GW, by 2030. That will be sufficient to provide over 2 million European households. This inexperienced vitality hall may assist shore up vitality safety within the European Union, changing the Russian pure fuel that Europe used to import. It may assist the E.U. meet
its increasingly strict emissions targets. And the hall may increase financial ties between Europe and its neighbors, supporters of the plan say.
However the formidable challenge faces main obstacles. The Black Sea is nearly 1,200 kilometers lengthy, and the proposed undersea energy cable would want to run the size of it, making it the longest and deepest on the planet. For the time being, the Caucasus nations don’t produce sufficient renewable electrical energy to export it, in order that they must construct a minimum of thrice extra capability. Each of those efforts would take an enormous, not-yet-secured monetary funding.
What’s extra, safety issues within the Black Sea may endanger the cable and the specialised ships that might lay it down. Floating mines used within the ongoing Ukraine conflict already pose a danger to ships in these waters. And very important undersea cables elsewhere in Europe have not too long ago been focused, together with an influence line below the Baltic Sea that
was severed in December. Western authorities authorities deemed it an act of sabotage probably organized by Russia, and known as it a new and growing risk for undersea infrastructure.
Briefly, the architects of the inexperienced hall face vital and different obstacles. But when they succeed, it’ll mark a daring feat of engineering to spice up clear vitality and battle local weather.
Azerbaijan’s Pivot From Oil to Photo voltaic and Wind
Of the six nations that make up the Caucasus area, Azerbaijan boasts the most important potential for producing exportable renewable vitality for Europe, a incontrovertible fact that presents some measure of irony. Azerbaijan constructed its economic system on its ample fossil fuels. Methane naturally seeps out of the bottom in some locations, feeding
ever-burning fires that in historical occasions stoked Zoroastrian non secular beliefs and earned Azerbaijan the nickname “the land of fireside.”
In 1846, Baku, the nation’s capital, was the location of the world’s first mechanically drilled oil effectively, and by the flip of the twentieth century, the nation provided greater than half of the world’s oil. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, manufacturing and export of oil and fuel proved instrumental in lifting Azerbaijan out of post-Communist poverty. Fossil fuels nonetheless characterize
90 percent of Azerbaijan’s exports and up to 50 percent of its GDP, in accordance with the Worldwide Power Company.
Masdar’s 230-MW Garadagh plant, the primary utility-scale photo voltaic farm in Azerbaijan, serves as an early signal of the nation’s vitality transition.Masdar
Over the previous decade, although, Azerbaijan has tried to inexperienced up its vitality sector. In 2016, for instance, the nation
set a goal of sourcing 20 p.c of its vitality from renewables by 2020. But it surely fell far short of that purpose, main observers to wonder if the petrostate was critical or simply partaking in greenwashing.
Azerbaijan’s first vital step towards its clear vitality purpose was
the completion, in 2023, of the Garadagh photo voltaic plant, about an hour’s drive from Baku. The plant sits in a bowl-shaped patch of dry scrubland ringed by hills, empty apart from the occasional shepherd passing together with his flock. The plant’s photo voltaic panels run in lengthy rows over the gently sloped terrain. Each minute or so, the quiet is damaged by a mechanical whir, as motors routinely reposition the panels to trace the solar’s path throughout the sky.
The plant provides as much as 230 megawatts of energy to Azerbaijan’s grid. Web site supervisor
Kamil Manafov works from a management room that also smells like new constructing supplies, the place giant wall-mounted screens show the plant’s minute-by-minute efficiency. “I grew up within the closest village to right here, Gobustan,” Manafov informed IEEE Spectrum throughout a go to in November. Now, the village attracts energy partially from the Garadagh plant, and college teams come to Garadagh nearly each week to learn the way photo voltaic crops work in apply, he says.
Azerbaijan’s Power Transition
At his welcome-to-COP29 speech, Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev proclaimed that
the country would build 6 GW of renewable-energy capability by 2030, and that it has agreements to construct a complete of 10 GW—far past the 1.7 GW the nation presently generates. Among the added electrical energy can be used domestically, whereas a lot can be despatched overseas.
To increase its renewable vitality technology, Azerbaijan is generally banking on wind energy, which received’t shock anybody who’s frolicked in Baku and felt the fierce wind that usually blows by way of it.
A 2022 road map from the World Financial institution, the Worldwide Finance Corp., and Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Power estimated that the nation may realistically set up 7 GW of offshore wind energy within the Caspian Sea by 2040.
On shore, Azerbaijan’s first main wind-power challenge, a 240-MW plant within the japanese areas of Khizi and Absheron, is below development and expected to be operational by subsequent yr. Three more solar and wind plants, totaling 1 GW, are additionally below improvement.
A lot of the cash and experience for these initiatives comes from overseas. Masdar, a United Arab Emirates state-owned firm that develops green-energy initiatives, secured the funding for and continues to operate the Garadagh plant. Acwa Energy, an energy-development firm primarily based in Saudi Arabia, holds the same role within the Khizi–Absheron wind plant. Thus far, the 2 have introduced they may make investments over $6 billion complete in Azerbaijan’s green-energy initiatives.
Masdar alone may be sure that the president’s guarantees are stored: The corporate
aims to develop 10 GW of unpolluted vitality by 2030, together with the initiatives in progress. “On this area we’ve got numerous potential that’s untapped,” says Maryam Al Mazrouei, Masdar’s head of enterprise improvement for a lot of the previous Soviet Union, who spoke with IEEE Spectrum on the U.A.E.’s pavilion at COP29. “The assets and infrastructure can be found, and there may be the need to do it.”
Among the initiatives characterize extra than simply clear energy. The vitality large BP and the Azerbaijani authorities hosted
a signing ceremony at COP29 for the 240-MW Shafag photo voltaic plant, which will likely be constructed close to Jabrayil, about 350 km southwest of Baku. The city was destroyed and deserted throughout Azerbaijan’s latest conflict with the Armenia-backed breakaway area of Nagorno-Karabakh. Throughout combating in 2020, Azerbaijan retook the land, and in 2021 the federal government declared that the area can be developed as a carbon-neutral “green energy zone.”
Areas razed by conflict are like a “a clean white paper,” says
Orkhan Huseynov, a spokesman for SOCAR, the State Oil Firm of the Republic of Azerbaijan. “We are able to write no matter we would like.” The plant’s identify, Shafag, means “dawn” in Azerbaijani—the plant will produce solar energy, sure, however it’s additionally a brand new begin for the area.
The Flame Towers in Baku symbolize the nation’s vitality assets and historical historical past of fireside worship. In November, Baku hosted the twenty ninth annual United Nations Local weather Change Convention. Emad Aljumah/Getty Photographs
The Yanar Dağ, a natural-gas fireplace, constantly blazes on a hillside on the Absheron Peninsula on the Caspian Sea, close to Baku. It stoked fireplace worship in historical occasions.Stephen Anthony Rohan/Getty Photographs
As a result of the Caucasus green-energy hall guarantees higher grid stability by diversifying electrical energy sources, higher commerce connections, and assist with the vitality transition, Azerbaijan’s neighbors are vying to be included. Bulgaria desires in, as does Armenia.
Tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan stay excessive, nevertheless. The E.U. want to embody Armenia within the Black Sea vitality challenge however Azerbaijani officers have reportedly mentioned they may admit Armenia provided that it indicators a peace treaty affirming the standing of Nagorno-Karabakh. This may quantity to Armenia accepting defeat and end result within the departure of ethnic Armenians from the disputed territory.
In the meantime, Azerbaijan and its neighbors to the east—Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan—are planning a
cross-border electricity trade that includes laying a transmission cable a whole lot of kilometers throughout the Caspian Sea. Uzbekistan has built solar and wind plants totaling 3.5 GW and is growing 24 GW extra, with plans to export a lot of it to Europe. This may successfully make a green-energy megagrid working all the way in which from the middle of Asia to Europe’s Atlantic coast.
Black Sea Energy Hyperlink
Even when all of this new energy technology will get constructed, organizers of the Caucasus green-energy hall will nonetheless have to maneuver the electrical energy throughout an enormous physique of water into Europe. The
longest existing undersea power cable carries 1.4 GW throughout a 720-km stretch of the North Sea between England and Norway, at depths of as much as 700 meters. The Black Sea energy hyperlink, in contrast, would traverse over 1,100 km of water, at depths as much as 2,200 meters, which might make it slightly deeper than any present subsea electrical energy cable on the planet.
A primary part of the Black Sea challenge may carry 1.3 GW, lower than 1 / 4 of the challenge’s aspirational 6 GW.
A feasibility study finalized at COP29 and carried out by CESI, an Italian engineering consultancy, concluded the primary part of the challenge was doable and would value $3.1 to three.7 billion. The road would run from Anaklia, Georgia, on the east finish of the Black Sea, to Constanța, Romania, on the west finish, and would require some new infrastructure to attach it to the present grid there. The electrical energy delivered would circulation into Hungary and the remainder of Europe from there. A possible second part would increase the undersea line to between 4 and 6 GW.
Laying the Black Sea line presents a formidable engineering problem. Solely two corporations on the planet—
Prysmian, primarily based in Milan, and Nexans in Paris—have put in this type of deep-sea electrical cable. They each use particular ships that carry as much as 13,000 tonnes of cable in segments as much as 200-km lengthy and wrapped round large spools as much as 30 meters in diameter.
The Nexans cable-laying vessel can carry as much as 13,000 tonnes of cable on spool-like turntables. Nexans, primarily based in Paris, is one in all solely two corporations on the planet which have put in deep-sea energy cables.Nexans
Ship crews can lay round 10 km of cable per day; once they get to the top of a section, employees known as jointers join one section to the subsequent by manually welding collectively every of the cables’ many layers. Whereas telecommunications cables have been laid in
trenches 8-km deep, energy cables are a lot thicker and heavier, so inserting and even transporting them is more difficult. Only one,200 km of this type of cable are manufactured annually globally, and with buyer demand from different initiatives, it’ll take three to 4 years simply to supply sufficient for the Black Sea challenge.
As if all of that isn’t troublesome sufficient, the Black Sea
is littered with floating mines positioned by each Ukraine and Russia throughout their ongoing conflict. Among the mines flow into across the sea, ending up in unpredictable locations, including Romanian beaches. The mines are sparse sufficient that commerce within the Black Sea has nearly returned to prewar ranges, however ships are nonetheless in danger.
Intentional sabotage of undersea cables—a brand new form of risk—additionally hangs over the challenge. This previous Christmas, an undersea energy cable connecting Finland and Estonia was partially severed, and
Finnish investigators said the injury probably resulted from an oil tanker dragging its anchor. The E.U.’s head of international affairs mentioned the ship was a part of Russia’s “shadow fleet,” a bunch of a whole lot of vessels which are formally unbiased however allegedly take orders from the Kremlin.
That wasn’t the one incident of sabotage. Two fiber-optic communications cables working below the Baltic Sea
were severed in November, and Western governments suggested that Moscow directed the assault. Russia allegedly has been gathering information and building such capabilities for a minimum of a few years.
Power-industry observers say they’re involved that the Black Sea green-energy cable, which successfully sidelines Russia by offering an alternative choice to its pure fuel, may stoke a focused assault. If insurers are spooked by this chance, they might refuse to cowl the cable, which may scotch the challenge earlier than it begins.
Undersea Cable May Increase E.U. Power Safety
The concept for the Black Sea cable emerged a few decade in the past amongst grid operators and consultants within the Black Sea area. It piqued curiosity in energy-policy circles, and in 2020, the World Financial institution revealed a research discovering that the cable might be financially productive. The following yr, USAID and the
United States Energy Association discovered that it made technical sense. However the formidable thought didn’t garner sturdy political or monetary help. “Normally, these initiatives require some political backing,” says
Agha Bayramov, an vitality geopolitics researcher on the College of Groningen, within the Netherlands. “What nice energy will help it?”
The challenge inadvertently discovered that nice energy with the beginning of the Ukraine conflict. When Russia invaded in February 2022, the E.U. severely sanctioned the nation, which responded by
cutting the amount of natural gas it sends to Europe by 55 p.c in 2022 and by 81 p.c in 2023. On the identical time, the E.U. had set demanding new targets for lowering greenhouse fuel emissions. The end result: Europe wanted different sources of vitality.
Azerbaijan hopes to generate gigawatts of renewable electrical energy and ship it throughout the Black Sea to Europe.
The E.U. compensated by
increasing gas imports from different nations, similar to Norway and the USA, and by lowering its fuel consumption general. However over the long term, to fulfill its local weather objectives, the continent will want entry to much more clean energy, making the thought of the Black Sea cable challenge much more interesting.
In December 2022, leaders from Azerbaijan, Georgia, Hungary, and Romania signed a memorandum of understanding on growing the inexperienced hall. On the signing ceremony, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Fee,
voiced strong support for the challenge. An E.U. commissioner tweeted the identical month that the union anticipated to contribute an estimated €2.3 billion ($2.5 billion) for the cable.
However that cash is just not but assured, and extra will likely be wanted. To that finish, Georgia and Romania intention to get the cable designated a
Project of Mutual Interest, making it a precedence for the E.U. and doubtlessly unlocking billions in funding. “Psychologically it’s very, excellent to get that standing,” says Zviad Gachechiladze, one of many plan’s architects and a director at Georgian State Electrosystem, the nation’s grid operator. Transmission strains connecting Azerbaijan to the Black Sea will run by way of Georgia.
One other key gatekeeper is
SOCAR, which oversees the nation’s vitality infrastructure and serves as a contractor for its renewable-energy initiatives. The corporate’s Baku headquarters sit in a modern, curving, 42-story tower constructed to face up to wind speeds as much as 190 kilometers per hour.
On the finish of 2023, SOCAR created a subsidiary, SOCAR Inexperienced, to implement the nation’s renewable-energy plans. However clearly, Azerbaijan’s large green-energy objectives stay subordinate to fossil fuels for the foreseeable future.
Spectrum met with SOCAR spokesman Orkhan Huseynov within the SOCAR Tower, its metal exterior gleaming on a cool, but not uncomfortably windy day. “We do really feel local weather change. The extent of the Caspian is falling. The rivers have much less water,” says Huseynov. However “making the change to inexperienced vitality in 30 years is just not simple,” he says. “Oil and fuel are the cornerstone of our economic system. Each household has somebody working on this {industry}. We’re making an attempt to maintain the steadiness.”
This text seems within the April 2025 print subject as “Inexperienced-Power Hyperlink Set to Span Black Sea.”
发布者：Amos Zeeberg，转转请注明出处：https://robotalks.cn/why-the-world-is-suddenly-watching-azerbaijans-energy-plans/
