Total Eren plans gigawatt-scale onshore wind and storage in Kazakhstan
Developer as part of MoU with Central Asian country foresees some 200 wind turbines and li-ion battery storage supplied by TotalEnergies unit Saft
French renewables developer Total Eren has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Kazakhstan to develop, finance, build and operate a massive onshore wind and energy storage hybrid project.
The plan foresees 1GW of wind energy linked to 500MW to 1GW of battery energy storage located in central Kazakhstan.
The developer signed the MoU with the central Asian country’s energy ministry, its ‘Samruk-Kazyna’ national wealth fund, and state-owned oil & gas company KazMunaiGas.
“We will work closely together to develop the 1GW wind project, which will represent a unique reference and a pioneer innovation for the energy transition of Kazakhstan and more widely, of Central Asia,” Fabienne Demol, global head of business development at Total Eren, said at the signing ceremony last week.
“With this project, Total Eren is leveraging the established track record, expertise, and historical presence of its strategic shareholder, TotalEnergies.”
The project shows Kazakhstan’s determination to plan bold and massive projects en route to its goal to reach carbon neutrality by 2060, with an intermediary step of boosting its so far limited share of renewables in its power mix to 15% by 2030.
The wind-storage hybrid with Total Eren would produce some 3,800 gigawatt hours annually for 30 years, enough to supply more than 1m people in Kazakhstan every year with green electricity, while reducing CO2 emissions by about 3.2m tons per year, the developer said.
Total Eren already has built two solar arrays in Kazakhstan with a combined capacity of 128MW.
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