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Tunisia to Invest $160 Million in Renewable Energies | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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A general view of the facilities at the Chergui gas field of British oilfield services company Petrofac, on the island of Kerkennah, Tunisia, April 17, 2016. REUTERS/Mohamed Amine Ben Aziza


Tunisia- The Tunisian Department of Energy issued this month a tender for projects that aim at providing 210 MW of renewable energy with a cost of TND400 million (USD160 million).

Minister of Energy, Mines and Renewable Energies Héla Cheikhrouhou said during an international conference on renewable energy in Tunisia that projects with a capacity of 1 MW, projects with a capacity of 30 MW and micro-projects that don’t exceed 5MW of wind energy are subject to authorizations and not conditions to grant more chances to the Tunisian promoters.

The minister said that the Tunisian Electricity and Gas Company (STEG) will buy 60 MW of solar-powered electricity from major projects, 10 MW and micro-projects, as well as projects with a capacity of 70 MW of the wind-energy projects.

“The production cost must be reasonable so that STEG customers can benefit from them,” Cheikhrouhou said.

Decades after the government had laid hands on this strategic sector, the Tunisian parliament approved in 2015 a law to generate electricity from renewable energy by the private sector.

Tunisia imports fossil energy to cover 99 percent of its energy needs. The share of renewable energies has not exceeded the 1 percent in providing energy. Up to 97 percent of electricity is generated by natural gas while the remaining – estimated as 3 percent – its major source is renewable energy.