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Uzbekistan will produce a National General Plan for Energy Development to 2050 by 1 July 2027, a document intended to map future electricity demand, identify where new power stations are needed and guide investment in grid infrastructure across the country. President Shavkat Mirziyoyev announced the initiative on 16 October at an open dialogue with investors in the fuel and energy sector, according to his press service.

The plan will be released in two stages. A grid-connection opportunity map — showing prospective demand, available land plots, connection terms and offtake prices — is due by 1 March 2027. The full master plan follows four months later. The sequencing is deliberate: rather than negotiating each project individually, the government intends to publish the country’s regional needs and network capacity in advance so that investors can assess prospects before committing capital.

Grid and Storage Buildout by 2030

Alongside the planning framework, Mirziyoyev set out a series of hard infrastructure targets for the end of the decade. By 2030, Uzbekistan aims to build approximately 5,000 kilometres of new transmission lines and 16 large substations — nine rated at 220 kilovolts and seven at 500 kilovolts. Total energy-storage capacity is to reach 4.5 gigawatts. The government also intends to bring 22 gigawatts of new generating capacity online, lift annual electricity output above 129 billion kilowatt-hours and raise the share of renewables in the generation mix from the current official figure of 31 percent to 54 percent.

Tenders for six solar and wind power stations with a combined capacity of 2.2 gigawatts are to be announced shortly. Priority will go to projects that integrate generation, transmission and storage, and all new schemes will be selected through open competitive tenders. Mirziyoyev stressed that the development of generating capacity, grids and storage systems must be treated as interconnected rather than planned in isolation.

Data Centres, Green Certificates and Regional Focus

The plan pays particular attention to Karakalpakstan, and the Bukhara, Jizzakh, Samarkand, Namangan, Kashkadarya and Tashkent regions. Karakalpakstan is under discussion as a site for data centres with up to one gigawatt of capacity, drawing on the republic’s wind-energy potential; a new 220-kilovolt substation and associated transmission lines have been proposed to connect them. The government also intends to pre-build energy infrastructure for large industrial enterprises and data centres more broadly, anticipating rising consumption as the digital economy and artificial intelligence applications expand.

On the revenue side, the government plans to introduce mechanisms allowing renewable-energy producers to earn additional income through the sale of green certificates and carbon credits. The precise rules governing those instruments and how proceeds would be distributed have not yet been disclosed.

At the 16 October meeting, six energy agreements worth a combined $4.7 billion were signed, covering 3 gigawatts of generating capacity and 400 megawatts of storage. The presidential administration said $35 billion in investment has flowed into Uzbekistan’s energy sector over the past ten years.

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Javohir focuses on Uzbekistan's business environment, state-owned companies, financial regulation and the relationship between public institutions and private enterprise.