The Ministry of Energy of Kazakhstan has drawn up the balance of electricity until 2035

The Ministry of Energy of Kazakhstan has drawn up the balance of electricity until 2035. This was announced on September 13 by the Vice Minister of Energy of the Republic of Kazakhstan Zhandos Nurmaganbetov at the first Central Asian Clean Energy Forum in Almaty.

Taking into account the growth of the population of the republic, the industrial programs of the government and the construction of new enterprises, the ministry expects a consumption level of 153 billion kWh by 2035.

“We will sum up these figures later. And now we understand that we live in countries where electricity is a sensitive commodity and we are afraid to raise the cost. And if we assume that we did not build anything and would work on the fleet of equipment that we have, then we see that with the existing stations, taking into account the planned decommissioning, closing of these stations, they are old enough, our output will be only 89 billion kW h. That is, the gap is almost 60-70 billion kWh, which we need to close,” the vice minister said.

The speaker added that according to the adopted concept of green development, Kazakhstan will need to build a large number of "green" sources of electricity.

“In Kazakhstan, 69% of electricity is generated by coal,” the Vice Minister said. The installed capacity of power plants in the republic, as Zh.Nurmaganbetov said, is 24,000 MW, of which 19,000 MW is available.

“There are seasonal restrictions related to water releases, gas availability, part of the generation is in planned, and unfortunately, emergency repairs,” the vice minister said.

The deputy head of the ministry added that the country's energy system is self-sufficient - last year 114 billion kWh were generated, of which 4.2 billion kWh came from renewable energy sources.

The vice minister said that 142 renewable energy facilities with a total capacity of 2.3 GW have been built in the republic.

Zh. Nurmaganbetov also noted that Kazakhstan plans to reach 50% of the share of alternative sources of electricity in the balance by 2050.

Plans to achieve this goal, as the Vice Minister said, will be included in the concept of achieving carbon neutrality by 2060.

“I draw your attention to the fact that 50% is not only green energy sources, but also alternative sources with low emissions, where we include nuclear and hydrogen energy,” he said.

The Vice Minister announced the development of a concept for the development of hydrogen energy.

“We want to understand where the hydrogen market is heading, if there is a place for it. How to produce it, how to store it, how to transport it and what will be the price,” he said.