Türkiye, Azerbaijan pursue new power links to Europe

BAKU

Türkiye and Azerbaijan are working on three electricity transmission projects, including a four-country green energy corridor, Energy and Natural Resources Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said on Sept. 11.

Speaking at the fifth Türkiye-Azerbaijan Energy Forum in Baku, Bayraktar outlined plans for a line reaching Türkiye through Azerbaijan’s Nakhchivan exclave and a green electricity corridor linking Azerbaijan, Georgia, Türkiye and Bulgaria.

He also said Türkiye could join a separate project to transmit electricity beneath the Black Sea to Europe, reaching Romania and Hungary.

Bayraktar described the four-country corridor as an electricity counterpart to the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP), saying Ankara wanted the project to advance to its next stage as soon as possible.

“As a first step, we want to start by using existing infrastructure,” he said, adding that the aim was to develop the project and increase capacity gradually.

Connecting the corridor with Azerbaijan’s agreements with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan could extend electricity links across the Turkic world, he said.

Bayraktar said he hoped to see agreements signed on the corridor at COP31, the U.N. climate conference to be held in Antalya on Nov. 9-20.

He also said Türkiye would seek joint decisions at the summit on a goal of raising electricity’s share of global final energy consumption to 35 percent by 2035.

Bayraktar said cooperation between Türkiye and Azerbaijan now extended beyond oil and natural gas to mining, renewable energy, energy efficiency and electricity infrastructure.

Azerbaijani Energy Minister Parviz Shahbazov, who hosted the forum, said the countries wanted to build on their existing energy partnership.

“We want to extend our successful cooperation in oil and natural gas to electrification,” Shahbazov said. He added that discussions covered both electricity generation and the connections needed to link a wider Eurasian region through Azerbaijan and Türkiye.

The two ministers signed an updated forum protocol, agreeing that one of the forum’s working groups would focus specifically on electricity interconnections.