Iran's potential to harness renewable energy, including solar and wind power, can help curtail natural gas consumption by a massive 70 billion cubic meters annually, Iran Renewable Energy Association’s secretary-general said.
“Close to 70 bcm of gas are burnt in thermal power stations in Iran each year to generate around 300 billion kilowatt hours of electricity. The same amount of power can be produced, if untapped solar and wind energy potentials are unlocked,” ILNA also quoted Mohammad Amin Zanganeh as saying.
Studies by the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Organization (Satba) have shown that wind and solar farms with an installed capacity of 40,000 megawatts and 80,000 MW of power respectively can be constructed in Iran, he added, noting that the potential capacity far exceeds the country’s demand of 70,000 MW and the surplus can be exported to energy-hungry neighbors.
According to the official, $85 billion worth of liquefied fuels were burnt in Iran’s thermal power plants in 2022, as the National Iranian Oil Company was unable to supply sufficient gas to them due to high household consumption.
“Investing the money in the renewable energy sector could have built solar farms with the capacity to produce 14,000 MW of power,” he said.
“If one-thousandth of the country's total area is allocated to solar power generation, it will produce 1,400 gigawatts.”
A standard 1 KW solar panel takes about 1.5 square meters of space, so it is viable to reach solar power production of 1,400 GW with timely investments.
"Only 1,000 MW of clean energy are produced in Iran, which obviously is very meager,” he said.
Iran is overly dependent on thermal power and renewables account for hardly 1% of the total annual output of 90,000 MW.
Subsidized Fuels
As long as fossil fuels, such as natural gas, are heavily subsidized in Iran, clean energy will not get the space it deserves, Zanganeh said.
The official noted that inexpensive natural gas has encouraged officials to keep building thermal power stations and neglect renewables.
“The government lacks a roadmap for energy economics, although efforts have been made to replace fossil fuels with green energy,” he said.
Such attempts have never been taken seriously, largely due to the bloated policymaking bureaucracy and shortsightedness of decision-makers.
Zanganeh pointed out that adding 5,000 MW of renewable energy to the present 1 GW renewable output will help create 100,000 jobs.
“Thanks to windy and sunny days, Iran has the potential to create a larger number of jobs in the green energy sector. Renewables can serve as an engine for employment and development,” he added, noting that promoting the gradually expanding sector would create jobs for the rural people in under developed areas and there will be no need for them to migrate to cities in search of work.
Iran’s rural population is said to be 20 million, accounting for about 26% of the total 82 million people. Official reports warn that rural areas are being abandoned due to lack of work and water shortage.
Iran has been suffering from drought and declining precipitation for decades and the water shortage has worsened in recent years.
Unlimited Access
Under such conditions, the development of renewable energy in rural regions, with abundant land and unlimited access to sunlight and strong winds, will lead to sustainable income and help reduce the worrying rural-to-urban migration.
Many countries in the developing and developed world are gradually moving away from dirty fuel toward cleaner energy.
Some rich nations have raised the bar higher and declared that in the next few years, renewables and electric vehicles will be the norm while fossil fuels will be consigned to history.
According to Mohammad Ali Pour-Amiri, a member of the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Organization, the production of each megawatt of electricity at thermal power plants needs about 700 liters of water while renewable power stations do not use water and, as a result, prevent the consumption of over 1.5 billion liters of water annually.
Considering the large number of thermal power plants in the central and arid regions of Iran, which use huge amounts of freshwater, the development of renewable power stations and replacement of a part of thermal stations could have saved up to 17 billion liters of water per year.
According to the latest reports, the capacity of renewable power plants in the country is 1 GW, the main share of which comes from solar power stations (52%) and wind farms (34%).
“Renewable power plants in the country generate 2.2 billion kilowatt hours of electricity per year. If the same amount of electricity was to be produced by thermal power plants, it would need $300 million worth of fossil fuel as feedstock,” he said.
