Final November, when Azerbaijan hosted COP29, the United Nations’ annual local weather summit, it was a form of coming-out celebration for the nation. Organizers needed to showcase how their small nation of almost 11 million, on the western shore of the Caspian Sea, had developed over its three a long time of independence and was able to play a job on this planet’s energy transition.
Held in Baku’s Olympic Stadium, COP29’s headline talks had 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 unique local weather dialogue concluded extra auspiciously.
There, delegations from Azerbaijan, Georgia, Hungary, and Romania finalized an bold plan: to generate as much as 6 gigawatts of clean energy within the Caucasus area, run the electrical energy by 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 green energy hall may assist shore up energy security within the European Union, changing the Russian natural gas 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 bold challenge faces main obstacles. The Black Sea is sort of 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 this planet. In the mean time, the Caucasus nations don’t produce sufficient renewable electrical energy to export it, in order that they must construct not less than thrice extra capability. Each of those efforts would take a large, not-yet-secured monetary funding.
What’s extra, safety issues within the Black Sea may endanger the cable and the specialised ships that will lay it down. Floating mines used within the ongoing Ukraine battle already pose a danger to ships in these waters. And important undersea cables elsewhere in Europe have lately been focused, together with an influence line beneath the Baltic Sea that
was severed in December. Western authorities authorities deemed it an act of sabotage possible organized by Russia, and referred to as it a new and growing risk for undersea infrastructure.
Briefly, the architects of the inexperienced hall face important and diverse obstacles. But when they succeed, it should mark a daring feat of engineering to spice up clear vitality and struggle 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 biggest potential for producing exportable renewable energy for Europe, a indisputable fact that presents some measure of irony. Azerbaijan constructed its financial system on its ample fossil fuels. Methane naturally seeps out of the bottom in some locations, feeding
ever-burning fires that in historic occasions stoked Zoroastrian spiritual beliefs and earned Azerbaijan the nickname “the land of fireplace.”
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 gas proved instrumental in lifting Azerbaijan out of post-Communist poverty. Fossil fuels nonetheless symbolize
90 percent of Azerbaijan’s exports and up to 50 percent of its GDP, in keeping with the International Energy Agency.
Masdar’s 230-MW Garadagh plant, the primary utility-scale solar 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 aim, main observers to wonder if the petrostate was severe or simply partaking in greenwashing.
Azerbaijan’s first important step towards its clear vitality aim 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 along with his flock. The plant’s solar panels run in lengthy rows over the gently sloped terrain. Each minute or so, the quiet is damaged by a mechanical whir, as motors mechanically 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. Website supervisor
Kamil Manafov works from a management room that also smells like new constructing supplies, the place massive 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 find out how photo voltaic vegetation work in follow, he says.
Azerbaijan’s Vitality 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 at present generates. Among the added electrical energy could be used domestically, whereas a lot could be despatched overseas.
To increase its renewable vitality era, Azerbaijan is usually banking on wind power, which received’t shock anybody who’s frolicked in Baku and felt the fierce wind that usually blows by it.
A 2022 road map from the World Financial institution, the Worldwide Finance Corp., and Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Vitality 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 beneath building and expected to be operational by subsequent yr. Three more solar and wind plants, totaling 1 GW, are additionally beneath improvement.
A lot of the cash and experience for these tasks comes from overseas. Masdar, a United Arab Emirates state-owned firm that develops green-energy tasks, 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. To this point, the 2 have introduced they may make investments over $6 billion whole in Azerbaijan’s green-energy tasks.
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 tasks in progress. “On this area we have now a lot of 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’s the desire to do it.”
Among the tasks symbolize 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 shall be constructed close to Jabrayil, about 350 km southwest of Baku. The city was destroyed and deserted throughout Azerbaijan’s current battle 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 could be developed as a carbon-neutral “green energy zone.”
Areas razed by battle 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 title, Shafag, means “dawn” in Azerbaijani—the plant will produce solar power, sure, nevertheless it’s additionally a brand new begin for the area.
The Flame Towers in Baku symbolize the nation’s vitality assets and historic historical past of fireplace worship. In November, Baku hosted the twenty ninth annual United Nations Climate Change Convention. Emad Aljumah/Getty Photos
The Yanar Dağ, a natural-gas hearth, constantly blazes on a hillside on the Absheron Peninsula on the Caspian Sea, close to Baku. It stoked hearth worship in historic occasions.Stephen Anthony Rohan/Getty Photos
As a result of the Caucasus green-energy hall guarantees larger 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 needs in, as does Armenia.
Tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan stay excessive, nevertheless. The E.U. wish to embody Armenia within the Black Sea vitality challenge however Azerbaijani officers have reportedly stated they may admit Armenia provided that it indicators a peace treaty affirming the standing of Nagorno-Karabakh. This could 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 entails laying a transmission cable tons of 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 could successfully make a green-energy megagrid operating all the best way from the middle of Asia to Europe’s Atlantic coast.
Black Sea Energy Hyperlink
Even when all of this new power generation 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, against this, would traverse over 1,100 km of water, at depths as much as 2,200 meters, which might make it slightly deeper than any current subsea electrical energy cable on this 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 prevailing grid there. The electrical energy delivered would stream 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 firms on this planet—
Prysmian, primarily based in Milan, and Nexans in Paris—have put in this sort 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 certainly one of solely two firms on this planet which have put in deep-sea energy cables.Nexans
Ship crews can lay round 10 km of cable per day; after they get to the tip of a phase, employees referred to as jointers join one phase 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 tougher. Only one,200 km of this sort of cable are manufactured annually globally, and with buyer demand from different tasks, it should 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 battle. 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 type 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 possible resulted from an oil tanker dragging its anchor. The E.U.’s head of overseas affairs stated the ship was a part of Russia’s “shadow fleet,” a gaggle of tons of of vessels which are formally impartial however allegedly take orders from the Kremlin.
That wasn’t the one incident of sabotage. Two fiber-optic communications cables operating beneath 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 not less than a few years.
Vitality-industry observers say they’re involved that the Black Sea green-energy cable, which successfully sidelines Russia by offering a substitute for its pure gasoline, may stoke a focused assault. If insurers are spooked by this risk, they could refuse to cowl the cable, which may scotch the challenge earlier than it begins.
Undersea Cable Might Enhance E.U. Vitality 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 could possibly be financially productive. The subsequent yr, USAID and the
United States Energy Association discovered that it made technical sense. However the bold concept didn’t garner robust political or monetary assist. “Normally, these tasks require some political backing,” says
Agha Bayramov, an vitality geopolitics researcher on the College of Groningen, in the Netherlands. “What nice energy will assist it?”
The challenge inadvertently discovered that nice energy with the beginning of the Ukraine battle. 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 similar time, the E.U. had set demanding new targets for reducing greenhouse gas 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, comparable to Norway and the United States, and by reducing its gasoline consumption general. However over the long term, to satisfy its local weather targets, 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 Commission,
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 shouldn’t be but assured, and extra shall be wanted. To that finish, Georgia and Romania purpose to get the cable designated a
Project of Mutual Interest, making it a precedence for the E.U. and probably 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 Georgia.
One other key gatekeeper is
SOCAR, which oversees the nation’s vitality infrastructure and serves as a contractor for its renewable-energy tasks. 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 massive green-energy targets 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 shouldn’t be simple,” he says. “Oil and gasoline are the cornerstone of our financial system. Each household has somebody working on this {industry}. We’re attempting to maintain the stability.”
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