With COP 29 underway, the presidents of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan have signed a strategic partnership to establish a Caspian green-energy corridor. The ambitious project would seek to transport energy generated in the two Central Asian nations to Azerbaijan, itself a growing exporter of green energy. The proposed end destination for Central Asia’s green energy exports is the European Union.

According to a statement released by the office of the President of Uzbekistan, the corridor will transport wind- and solar-generated energy across the Caspian Sea.  The statement also underscored Tashkent’s investments in green energy, noting that the country plans to add a minimum of 2 gigawatts of renewable energy to the national electric grid every year with the goal of renewables making up 40% of the country’s energy by 2030.  Azerbaijan’s Advisor to the President, Hikmet Hajiyev, wrote on X on November 13 that “the project will also be linked with the Black Sea energy cable,” a reference to Azerbaijan’s efforts to export green energy to Europe, by way of a cable through Georgia and the Black Sea.

This will, in theory, not only allow for the transfer of energy from Central Asia to Azerbaijan, but also onward from Azerbaijan to Europe.  

Saudi Arabia, a major investor active in the Caspian region, is also poised to be involved in the project. Energy Ministers from the three Caspian countries and Saudi Arabia signed a memorandum of understanding “ensuring the participation of Saudi Arabia in the Project for the Development and Transfer of Green Energy, between Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan and expanding cooperation in the area of green energy with Azerbaijan.”

This agreement has been in the works for some time, with a memorandum of understanding on the green-energy transit signed by the three Caspian countries in May 2024. At the time, Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Energy released a statement promising that a “business model will be developed for the development of international transmission corridors (financing, revenue flow, and ownership) and for the sale of green energy to the countries of the European Union.”

While Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Uzbekistan already supply significant amounts of energy generated from fossil fuels to Europe, exporting green energy from these countries to Europe would be a major step forward in regional connectivity.  Likewise, it would demonstrate greater commitment on the part of fossil-fuel producing countries to expand their green-energy sectors, crucial globally, but also important particularly to Central Asia, one of the regions most vulnerable to climate change.