Conference on energy efficiency revealed vulnerable spots in Azerbaijan"s energy sector

The energy efficient technologies must be widely applied by the state agencies to spread in the remaining sectors, Jamil Melikov, Deputy General Director of the Azerbaijan State Agency for Alternative and Renewable Sources of Power, said yesterday at the conference "Energy Efficiency: Economic and Institutional Aspects and Perspectives."

Azerbaijan was always rich in hydrocarbons and their potential is sufficient now. However, the government is going to develop alternative energy.

"In 2004 Azerbaijan passed the state program of development of alternative power and in 2009 the government established the State Agency under the Ministry of Industry and Energy. The state company was set up on the basis of the state agency in June 2012," Melikov added.

Edita Novak, first secretary, Energy Advisor for the EU representation in Azerbaijan has described the plans of development of alternative energy and energy efficiency in Europe by 2020-2030. She added that by 2020 share of alternative energy in EU will not be increased up to 20%. We need additional efforts to reach this level of energy efficiency, she added.

It has been said at the conference that Austria has very good results of energy efficiency. According to the calculations, despite the high pace of economic development, by 2050 this country will consume the energy equivalent to that it consumed in 2005.

The population of Azerbaijan and its size is almost equal to Austria. However, the issue of energy consumption reduction is not a priority of the government. Power and gas consumption went down after wide application of meters.

Tahir Jafarov, representative of the Ministry of Industry and Energy, said that 313.8 grams of conditional fuel is used to generate 1 kwh of power. "In 2007 this index in Azerenerji company totaled 353 grams," he added.

He said during the past five years about 1.7 million tons of conditional fuel a year was saved during power generation. Thermal power stations use about 5 billion cub.m. of natural gas a year to generate power.

"In the perspective we plan to generate 2.6 billion kwh of power from alternative sources in Azerbaijan, which will mean saving additional 1 million tons of conditional fuel," Jafarov said.

At present power capacity of the country is 6400 MWt and in the future Azerbaijan will be able to export 8-10 billion kwh power a year.

Jafarov said that at present the power system suffered huge losses. During 2011 losses in the power lines constituted 4.59% against 4.79% in 2010. The losses in the distribution networks constituted 16%. There is also 1% of losses at the power stations.

"This is several times higher, than in the European countries," he said.

Since 2005 Azerbaijan has invested almost 3 billion Euro into the electric energy sector. This was spent to build new power stations and upgrade the distribution network as well as build new power lines.

* The conference has been organized by the Centre of Strategic Studied under the presidential administration of Azerbaijan and the International Research Centre of the Black Sea.-0-