Turkey and Azerbaijan are looking to create an electricity corridor to boost energy connectivity between Azerbaijan and southeast Europe, Turkish Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, Alparslan Bayraktar, said on Monday.
"We are going to create the electricity version of TANAP," the Turkish official said at the Baku Energy Week in Azerbaijan, referring to the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP), the first pipeline leg of the Southern Gas Corridor that ships gas from Azerbaijan to Europe through Turkey.
Turkey also plans to upgrade its electricity transmission and distribution system with investments estimated at $30 billion over the next decade, the minister said at the Baku conference, as carried by Reuters.
As countries look to strengthen their regional cooperation and reliance on homegrown resources, Turkey and Azerbaijan are expanding the bilateral energy partnership into electricity and the potential electricity corridor, which could include Georgia and Bulgaria, too.
Early this year, Azerbaijan's power transmission grid operator AzerEnergy launched construction of Azerbaijan's sections of a planned line that ultimately can connect Azerbaijan and Europe via the TRIPP corridor and Turkey, Eurasianet reported.
In addition to the new power lines, AzerEnergy has also announced plans to build a 230-kilometer-long 400 kV transmission line from Nakhchivan to Turkey.
Once constructed, the 400kV line would form the backbone of power transmission infrastructure for Central Asia exports to Europe. Azerbaijan is also working with Georgia, Romania, and Hungary on a trans-Black Sea power transmission project, in addition to the EU route via Turkey.
Meanwhile, TANAP and the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), which connect at the Evros area of Kipoi at the Greek-Turkish border, have come to play a key role in Europe's energy security as they have delivered large volumes of natural gas from Azerbaijan to EU member states.
Azerbaijan is raising its gas production and exports as Europe's import needs of non-Russian gas have soared since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
