Hydro-rich Tajikistan Plans to Produce 1 Million Tons of Hydrogen by 2040

Reuters

16:22 JST, September 25, 2023

TOKYO, Sept 25 (Reuters) – Hydropower-rich Tajikistan plans to produce 1 million metric tons of green hydrogen by 2040 for usage at home and exports to neighboring central Asian countries, its Minister of Energy and Water Resources Daler Juma told Reuters on Monday.

Juma, who is visiting Japan to attend a Tokyo energy transition event, said that Tajikistan planned to have 10 gigawatt of renewable energy capacity by 2030.

“We are fully dependent on oil product imports… and are developing a road map for producing green hydrogen,” Juma told Reuters on the sidelines of the conference.

Hydropower generates nearly all electricity of the Central Asian nation of Tajikistan and which imports the bulk of its oil product needs from Russia. According to the International Energy Agency, Tajikistan’s hydro potential is exploited at around 4%.

Tajikistan plans to produce 500,000 million tones of green hydrogen by 2030 and to double that figure by 2040 thanks to ‘affordable competitive electric power’, said Juma, with 75% of that potentially aimed for exports to Central Asian countries using fossil fuels.

But as climate change has seen Tajikistan’s glaciers melting, the country wants to have 10% of its electricity coming from sources other than hydropower, including from solar and wind, by 2030, to diversify electric power sources, Juma added.

He, however, did not elaborate on the financial details of the green hydrogen production plans.