PM says gov’t expects at least $3 billion in energy investment over 3 years

The Georgian government expects the country's energy sector to receive investments worth $3 billion over the next three years "if all projects being considered are launched", prime minister Irakli Garibashvili said at the government meeting on Monday.

Garibashvili said the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war and the resulting energy crisis had "once again revealed the difficulties that countries and states face", naming energy security and energy independence as the challenges.

Georgia, of course, has quite large resources - especially hydro resources - so this resource needs to be used and utilised as wisely as possible. This is our main priority and we have been working actively in this direction for the last few months", he noted.

A new scheme for the sector has been developed following consultations with the International Monetary Fund, the government head added before naming the suspension of the guaranteed purchase scheme and unsigned contracts following agreements for facilitating hydro power plants with about 800 MW of power as an outstanding issue.

Photo: PM's press office

The second issue is that the fate of new projects was unclear, and investors in general needed more clarity. So the new scheme which we will offer to investors involves support of energy projects by the government for 15 years after the commissioning of power plants with a CFD contract”, he said, adding the new scheme would involve supporting launch of power plants with a total capacity of 1,500 MW over the next three years by auction.

Garibashvili added the new scheme did not include large domestic HPP projects such as Namakhvani, Nenskra and Khudoni, and also noted an investment of approximately $2.2 billion was expected for the project.

He also pointed out the projects under the 800 MW plan and other large initiatives would be added to the former push for power generation.