After commissioning, the wind farm will be able to provide electricity to 1.65 million households, which is comparable to the Karakalpakstan population (1.99 million people). The project will save 2.4 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually, i.e. 2% of CO2 emissions from the Uzbek energy sector (112 million tons according to the BP World Energy Review). The onshore WPP will also allow Uzbekistan to take a step towards provision of 30% of its electricity needs with renewable energy sources (RES) which the country plans to achieve by 2030. According to the Ember Research Center, the RES share in Uzbekistan’s generation mix was 12% in 2020 (no later estimates are available).
Uzbekistan plans to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. To reach this goal, last year the country put into operation two solar power plants (SPP), 100 MW each, located in the Navoi and Samarkand regions. The first of the two SPPs was built by the Emirati company Masdar, and the second – by the French company Total Eren.
The only wind power producer in Central Asia is Kazakhstan where the installed capacity of wind turbines increased more than twenty times between 2014 and 2021 (from 0.05 GW), but did not exceed 1.2 GW. The ACWA Power project, if successfully implemented, will make Uzbekistan the leading operator of WPPs in the region.
