Azernews.Az

By Emil Valiyev
Certified Energy Auditor/Environmental adviser

A constant increase in demand for energy resources, environmental problems, man-made disasters arising during production and depletion of traditional energy resources have made a rapid expansion of use of renewable world energy sources necessary in the world as well as in Azerbaijan. According to the International Energy Agency (İRENA) by 2050, the global population will demand roughly 80% more energy than it does today.

In order to create new generating capacities in the country’s general energy balance and provide a more efficient use of h​ydrocarbon resources with the widespread use of renewable energy sources, the need and necessity in developing the use of renewable energy sources set implementation of comprehensive measures as an important task. One of the most important measures in this direction is implementation of innovation policy in renewable energy sector. Science, technology and innovation have been recognized as one of the main drivers behind productivity increases and a key long-term lever for economic growth and prosperity.

Nowadays, strengthening of measures in renewable energy sources and energy efficiency has an increasingly important role. These principles became important in the Republic of Azerbaijan too. Therefore, in order to reduce a non-effective use of renewable energy sources important measures are taken in the direction of creation modern quality infrastructure for energy efficiency that stimulates implementation of innovations and new technologies.

Thanks to renewable energy sources having great potential regarding creation of new generating capacities in the Republic of Azerbaijan, as well as application of scientific and technological innovations of the modern era and widespread use of energy derived from these sources, taking into account formation of new management structures regulating the field, the State Agency on Alternative and Renewable Energy Sources of the Republic of Azerbaijan (SAARES) and “Azalternativenerji” Limited Liability Company under the Agency have been established by the degree of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan dated February 1, 2013.

As a consequence of the state policy support to renewable energy innovation, Azguntex Solar Panel plant was opened on 24 April 2012. The plant is equipped with modern equipment from European countries and the first line of plant’s production capacity of 25 MW/year. Azguntex LLC having a certificate of photovoltaic module qualification installed the second production line last year and as a result annual production capacity increased two times. Initially, 120 thousand solar panels will be annually produced in the plant; however, 240 thousand solar panels will be produced in the future. It is planned to create such fields as inverters, dual meters, photo elements, small wind turbines, batteries and other similar production areas in the nearest future.

One of the projects contributing to the sustainable development of the economy where the latest technological achievements meet with innovative solutions is the Sumgait High-Tech Park Project. In general, it is planned to build 15 plants in the park area based on the technology of efficient use of alternative and renewable energy. Factories on optical lenses, glass and basalt fibres, battery production and other plants that will be established in the park area will create an opportunity to produce necessary equipment needed in obtaining, acquisition and usage of renewable energy in the country.

Sumgait High-Tech Park

It is planned to realize a unique wind farm project “Wind Island-1” in Azerbaijan. This project will be implemented at the Pirallahi and Chilov islands in the Caspian Sea and design capacity of this farm is 200 MW. It has in mind that this project will connect these islands through Estacada. SAARES and Power China company has already signed the agreement for cooperation within framework of this project.

Last year, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree endorsing “Strategic road maps for the national economy and main economic sectors. The expected results of the Strategic Road Map on development of the public utilities sets the targets to be installed generation capacity 350 MW wind energy , 50 MW solar energy, 20 MW bioenergy for 2020:

This Strategic Road Map this approach - construction of the small-scale generation capacity at the consumers side, including the installation of the PV panels at the roofs of the buildings will be developed widely used after 2020.

Though advances and achievements were gained in the field of renewable energy in Azerbaijan, there are still some obstacles and shortcomings for the development of this field.

It is useful to identify the regulatory issues presented by the various renewable technologies. Government should adopt and apply different types of regulatory policies and incentives that might be utilized to promote renewable energy technologies. Recently, many countries have started to use targeted demand-side innovation policies such as investment subsidies, technology and performance standards, authorization procedures, green tariffs, supportive tax policy, public procurement, energy efficiency obligations and consumer policy to encourage demand for green technologies.

Financing of renewable energy projects is still difficult in Azerbaijan. Developing new-innovation technologies requires large initial investments. High capital costs caused by risks and market barriers are one of the key factors that hinder the financial development. For that, government should adopt special policies and financial incentives to encourage and attract major public and private investors into the renewable energy sector.

However, there is not much attention to enabling access to research infrastructures and moving towards the development of global research infrastructures in Azerbaijan. The European Union has agreed that, by 2020, 3% of Member States gross domestic product should be invested in research, development and innovation; as this is one of the five headline targets for the European Union 2020 Strategy.

One of the main problems in implementation of innovation policy in our country is a lack of trained professionals on the specialties such as design of alternative energy structures, selection of equipment due to power, repair & design of energy equipment, application and repair of control-measurement devices, new alternative energy types in the faculty of energetic of higher education schools.

The literature, which focuses on renewable energy technology innovation assents that specific renewable energy policies are necessary to overcome the accompanying market failures and obstacles.

It is useful to identify the regulatory issues presented by the various renewable technologies. Policy makers should establish efficient governance and the regulatory environment for designating renewable energy technology project development areas, removing barriers, setting standards, setting targets, taxing negative externalities, subsidizing positive externalities, tradable permits and other voluntary approaches.

Government must provide collaboration with international financial institutions to support financing and insurance of renewable energy technology systems, support for technology micro-finance models and removing barriers to novel finance pathways.

If public and private finance institutions join forces to standardize contract templates and other project documents to allow for an aggregation of smaller projects and local financial institutions are engaged to leverage local networks and know how to build strong project pipelines investment levels that may now sound unrealistic can be reached.

The authorities in this area should make efforts for increasing bilateral, regional and multilateral cooperation on science, technology and innovation, and solutions-oriented research, strengthening capacities in science, technology, innovation, research and promoting worldwide and cross-sector mobility access to publications from publicly funded research. Якорь

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