The demand the plan is built from is industrial. Consumption by industry alone is to rise from 38 billion kWh to 53.5 billion by 2030, on the government’s forecasts, and the press service’s account puts the ordering in one sentence: “First the demand is determined, after which the necessary generating capacity and infrastructure facilities are planned.” Projects, it says, will from now on be formed “above all from the prospective needs of the economy, the population and the regions”. Demand is set first, then the plants and the wires.
Scale comes next. Today’s solar, wind and hydro fleet, 8.8 GW on the plan’s own figures, is a fifth of the 46.1 GW it wants in 2030, and the 2035 target adds 11.1 GW more in 5 years. Storage is the one line with a count and a status: 26 projects, 4.2 GW, 17 in implementation.
Demand is set first, then the plants and the wires.
The account says what the plan saves and what it defers. Solar and wind, it says, already save “a substantial volume of natural gas every year” and reduce “the need to burn additional gas”; the long-term concept names “the development of renewable and nuclear energy”. It gives no investment sum, no tariff, no loss figure and no generation split by fuel; the president’s instructions were to launch the large projects under way on time and to take “concrete measures together with investors on projects with drawn-out implementation periods”.
What the plan does not price is the gas it saves. Uzbekistan imports gas and burns much of its own in power stations and homes; every gas turbine that solar displaces is gas the import contracts no longer have to cover. The new lines and 16 substations are the part of the plan that a household will notice first, since the region’s blackout of 14 August began with 3 tripped 500 kV lines in Kazakhstan, and the operators blamed each other for what tripped them.