PM Irakli Gharibashvili talks new scheme for supporting energy projects at government session
By Liza Mchedlidze
Tuesday, November 1, 2022
The Prime Minister of Georgia Irakli Gharibashvili spoke about the new scheme for supporting energy projects at the government meeting.
According to him, in the next 3 years, the country expects to invest at least 3 billion dollars in the energy sector.
As he noted, the on-going war and crisis once again demonstrated the need for energy security and energy independence. According to the Prime Minister, Georgia has a lot of resources, especially hydro resources which "needs to be used and utilized as wisely as possible".
"This is our main priority and we have worked actively in this direction for the last few months. We had consultations with the International Monetary Fund and this scheme, which we are presenting to you now, can be said to have been agreed upon, passed, and it will become official in just a few days.
i.e. What do we mean by a new offer, a new scheme - you know that in recent years, the so-called guaranteed purchase scheme has been suspended and memorandums have been issued in this direction for about 800 MW of HPPs, although some have started construction, but these contracts have not been signed, that's one issue.
The second issue - the fate of the new projects was unclear, so to speak, and investors in general needed more clarity, so the new scheme is as follows - the so-called difference between the prices on the part of the state for 15 years after the power plant was put into operation. With the cfd contract, support for energy projects is implied by the scheme that we will offer to investors.
The new support scheme includes promoting the construction of power plants with a total capacity of 1,500 MW over the next three years by auction. This does not include, of course, the 800 MW that I already mentioned, and also does not include large projects such as "Namakhvani", "Nenskra" and "Khudon".
That is, in total, only by promoting the construction of this 1,500 MW capacity, we expect an investment of approximately 2.2 billion US dollars. 800 MW projects and other large projects will be added to this, which we will discuss separately.
At least, we can say that during the next 3 years, with the reservation that all these projects will be signed and launched, we expect at least 3 billion dollars of investment in the energy sector.
This is a very important decision, because, on the one hand, we bring clarity, and on the other hand, I declare that this is our main priority and, of course, investors will have maximum support," said the Prime Minister.
