The Ministry of Energy of Kazakhstan recently informed that after a respective agreement was signed on March 1 in Riyadh, Saudi energy group ACWA Power will build a 1 GW wind farm in the Jetysu region of south-eastern Kazakhstan.
The Saudi company will finance the project with an initial investment of US$1.5 billion and operate the wind power plant facility whose construction is expected to begin in 2025 and is scheduled for completion in 2027.
The wind farm project marks ACWA Power’s entry into Kazakhstan.
ACWA Power has entered into the agreement with the Kazakh Ministry of Energy and the Samruk-Kazyna Sovereign Wealth Fund following Kazakhstan’s Minister of Energy Bolat Akchulakov and Samruk-Kazyna’s Chairman of the Board Almasadam Satkaliev working visit to Saudi Arabia.
During the visit, they held talks with top managers of Saudi Aramco, SABIC, and ACWA Power as well as with Saudi Minister of Energy Prince Abdulaziz Bin Salman Al Saud.
Kazakhstan also signed agreements with UAE’s Masdar and France’s TotalEnergies in December 2022-January 2023 to develop two 1 GW wind projects and has partnered with Sweden’s Svevind to develop a 20 GW green hydrogen plant in the Mangistau region, with electrolyzers powered by 0 GW of wind and solar PV plants.
After announcing an unconditional target to reach carbon neutrality by 2060 in 2020, the government of Kazakhstan raised in May 2021 the target on the renewables’ share in the power mix from 10% to 15% by 2030. In 2021, the country reached 11%.
Established in 2013, Kazakhstan’s 2050 Strategy aims to raise the share of non-fossil energies (nuclear, hydro, solar, and wind) from 3% (only wind and solar) in 2020, to about 30% by 2030 and 50% of Kazakhstan’s total energy consumption by 2050.
At the end of 2021, wind power represented 4% of Kazakhstan’s installed capacity with 1.2 GW.
