Page 58 - bne magazine September 2021_20210901

58 I Eurasia bne September 2021
The Uzbekneftegaz GTL plant receives its first fuel gas from Uztransgaz JSC's main gas pipeline. Uzbekistan is modernising its natural gas sector alongside investments into renewables.
Uzbekistan’s energy sector overhaul
Clare Nuttall in Tashkent
Uzbekistan has a fast growing and increasingly affluent population, which means energy demand is already increasing and will grow further in the coming years. Together with Tashkent’s participation in the global effort to fight climate change, this has prompted the government to draw up plans to overhaul existing infrastructure, raise efficiency and encourage investment into renewables.
“Development of the energy sector is essential for economic growth,” Deputy Energy Minister Bekhzot Narmatov said in an interview with bne IntelliNews
in Tashkent, in which he outlined the plans for energy sector liberalisation, infrastructure investments and boosting efficiency.
The government’s forecast, as set out in its power sector development concept for 2020 to 2030 is for the current
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demand of around 68bn kWh to increase to between 110bn and 115bn by the
end of the decade. “This increase is because of two factors: the population
is growing and will increase from 34mn today to close to 38mn by 2030, and consumption per capita, which is currently below the global average, is also expected to increase,” Bakhrom Umarbekov, project manager on renewables at the energy ministry, told bne IntelliNews in a separate interview.
Tashkent aims to establish an “open, liberal and investor friendly energy market” as the government tries
to “move away from government regulation in every part of the economy,” said Narmatov. “We believe liberalisation will bring the benefits of ensuring supply of energy resources, increasing competition and encouraging private investment into infrastructure, thus decreasing carbon emissions
because inefficient systems, especially in gas supplies, cause huge amounts of methane to be released into the air.”
To enable this to happen, the government is first investing into backbone infrastruc- ture for both electricity and gas because, as Narmatov put it, “when you don’t have the road, you can’t drive the bus”.
On June 15, the energy ministry outlined its plans to create a wholesale electricity market by 2025, which again is intended to improve management and reduce state ownership.
Investments into power and electricity infrastructure have accelerated in the last four years, during which time investments into electricity infrastructure amounted to 75% of the total investment during the independent period, or 2.5 times more than in the previous 26 years, according to Narmatov.