On November 10-11, the International Green Media Forum was held at the Almaty University of Power Engineering and Telecommunications named after Gumarbek Daukeyev (AUES).

The Forum was organized with USAID support. Its agenda Includes the topics such as renewable energy in Kazakhstan, the country's decarbonization commitments and their fulfillment strategy.

Representatives of the Parliament, the Ministry of Energy, independent experts in the field of renewable energy and journalists discussed green energy issues and climate change impact, legislative initiatives for environment protection, renewable energy projects in Kazakhstan, experience of European countries in developing RES and hydrogen energy industry.

The media forum is being held at AUES grounds, as AUES is a leading sectoral higher education institution in the field of energy, telecommunications, it technologies and information security, and space engineering," Saule Sagintayeva,the AUES Rector, said in her welcome speech.

A curriculum on renewable energy for undergraduate and graduate students has been developed and implemented at AUES.

USAID and AUES have a number of joint projects and long-term experience of effective cooperation. Besides, USAID is funding six students from Central Asian countries to attend the Master's Degree in RES and Energy Efficiency in AUES, as well as another 10 scholarships at the Kazakh-German University (DKU). Educational visits to RES facilities of Kazakhstan for students and teachers from Central Asian countries are organized on a regular basis

According to Bayan Abylkairova, Deputy Project Manager of the USAID program "Power Central Asia” (PCA), the USAID project aims to help five Central Asian countries achieve their national and regional energy priorities to ensure energy security and support them in obtaining economic benefits of regional electricity trade.

USAID is providing support in all areas of renewable energy development, including improvement of legislation on renewable energy, advice on introducing competitive procurement of renewable energy, development of model PPAs, other documents and much more. Also, Bayan Abylkairova noted that a gender plan, namely support for women in energy sector, was developed with the framework of the project.

There are professional internships for female students of energy departments in the Ministry of Energy, KEGOC, Samruk Energy, KOREM, workshops and training on technical topics and development of soft skills: gender policies, role of women in the energy sector in Central Asia. More than 600 women participated in experience-sharing and capacity¬building events of energy sector in 2018-2022," she said.

Consumption of green hydrogen will grow worldwide, and it will become the major alternative to oil and gas, noted Farkhad Kuanganov, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Astana International Science Complex, adding that Kazakhstan could only benefit from hydrogen exports in the future.

According to him, global market for hydrogen was 85 million tons in 2021. It is expected that this figure will grow by another 35 million tons until 2030.

"Hydrogen energy industry can become a powerful driver of the economy. Nineteen countries have been developing hydrogen energy for a period of six - seven years, and many countries are already developing hydrogen strategy programs," said Farkhad Kuanganov.

He noted that Kazakhstan's hydrogen development program is represented by Svevind, German company which implements projectsfor construction of green-energy facilities. The company intends to build a giant facility with 45 GW capacity, that will produce up to 3 million tons H2 per annum by 2031, in Mangistau region.

Nurlan Kapenov, Chairman of the Board of Qazaq Green Association noted that Kazakhstan set ambitious targets for RES development. In Kazakhstan, the installed capacity of RES facilities amounted to 2,330 MW by the result of the first half of 2022.

"At the moment, one of the current problems of RES sector is the high volatility of national currency exchange rate, that negatively affects financial standing of existing and new RES projects. Since the beginning of 2022, Qazaq Green RES Association, together with the Ministry of Energy of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the RES business community has been applying major efforts to improve investment climate in the sector. So, tariff indexation during the period of RES facility construction was introduced and the existing tariff indexation mechanism, which did not cover the currency risks of investors, was significantly improved," said Nurlan Kapenov.

On November 11, participants of the Forum went on a tourto operating wind farm of Samruk-Energo JSC.