At COP29, the Host Boasted About Its Renewable-Energy Plans. They Just Happen to be on Disputed Territory.

A view of the 230 MW Garadagh solar power plant in Alat in Baku, Azerbaijan, which was commissioned prior to the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war. PHOTO: MURAD SEZER/REUTERS

Azerbaijan disputes this, saying that building renewable power projects will help bring green energy to central Asia and Europe at a time when critical resources are needed most. “This idea came after liberating the territories,” said Elnur Soltanov, the country’s deputy energy minister, who also served as chief executive of the United Nations’ recent climate talks, COP29.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have been fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh since the end of the Soviet Union. When Azeri troops took control of the territory in September 2023, more than 100,000 Armenians fled within a week. Freedom House and other human-rights charities reported incidents of violence including deaths and mutilated bodies.

Azerbaijan says no Armenians were asked to leave and citizenship was offered to residents. It is planning to move Azeri families into the region. The energy ministry didn’t provide a comment on the allegations of violence.

It is in Nagorno-Karabakh and neighboring East Zangezur that Azerbaijan is centering its renewable-power efforts. The country is seeking funding and support to build more than 10 gigawatts of renewable power production in the region. British oil giant BP and Japanese electric utility TEPSCO have signed separate agreements for solar and wind projects in the region. BP has broken ground on its project there. Some of the renewable power generated from these projects is likely to be exported to Europe, the energy ministry says.

“It is obvious that this is a tactic to clear the remaining traces of Armenian history and cultural heritage from Nagorno-Karabakh,” said Andranik Shirinyan, the Armenian representative for human rights charity Freedom House. “This green-energy zone is just one way to do it so that there is nicer packaging for the international community.”

“The Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh should be able to exercise their right of return if they wish to,” Shirinyan said.

Elnur Soltanov, Azerbaijan’s deputy energy minister. PHOTO: HOLLIE ADAMS/BLOOMBERG NEWS

Deputy Energy Minister Soltanov said that a plan to build renewable-power projects in the country was first made in 2019, though the idea initially was to construct them closer to Baku. Masdar, the Emirati state renewable energy company, won a contract to build a wind farm outside the capital.

Soltanov said talks with companies such as BP started to focus on a potential solar project in the disputed region following the country’s decision to send troops into Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020. “We discussed the options,” he said. “The best radiation is either in the Nakhchivan exclave of Azerbaijan or in southern Karabakh.”

In a recent report, energy thinktank Ember said the Caucasus region that is likely to be the most productive for renewable power is the Black Sea, where wind turbines in Azerbaijan’s shallow waters could generate as much as 35 gigawatts—enough to power every home in the country nearly nine times over, according to The Wall Street Journal’s calculations.

BP plans to build a solar energy project in Jabrayil, a city in East Zangezur, south of Nagorno-Karabakh. Power generated from the project will be exported to fuel its oil-and-gas terminal Sangachal, on the Black Sea, south of the capital Baku, according to the company.

BP expects significant damage to the local environment, including harm to cultural sites, according to the company’s environmental impact assessments. The reports also highlight potential safety risks from unexploded land mines, which are common throughout much of Nagorno-Karabakh and East Zangezur.

BP declined to comment on its operations in East Zangezur.

Refugees fleeing from the Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023, a territory Azerbaijan and Armenia have been fighting over since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Azerbaijan is now centering its renewable-power efforts there. PHOTO: JUSTYNA MIELNIKIEWICZ/MAPS FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Patrick Galey, senior investigator at Global Witness, an environmental NGO, said publicly available information raises serious doubts over Azerbaijan’s green credentials. “We know that at least some of the electricity generated from planned solar and wind projects will go to power Azerbaijan’s oil and gas infrastructure. It’s frankly absurd to use renewable energy to power the very thing it is meant to be replacing,” he said.

Soltanov said the operations taking place in Jabrayil are in line with IPCC principles to decarbonise fossil-fuel production.

Azerbaijan’s history is complex, with numerous wars having been fought there over the centuries. Nagorno-Karabakh has changed hands multiple times. Folk songs talk of Karabakh as a homeland in both countries. Soltanov’s wife, an Azeri, fled the region during the wars in the 1990s.

For Armenians, who refer to the region as Artsakh, the move to build out renewables and settle Azeri families into the region twists the knife after decades of violence. “This is horrific, the cleansing of indigenous people in such a premeditated way because you just need the land,” said Nana Shakhnazaryan, an Armenian geopolitical analyst from the region.

Azerbaijan is also discussing a renewable energy project with French oil-and-gas giant TotalEnergies. The plan is to construct a solar project in an exclave of Azerbaijan called Nakhchivan, which is completely surrounded by Armenian territory. TotalEnergies didn’t respond to requests for comment on the project.

“There are no peace treaties, no agreed borders, no diplomatic relations,” said Matteo Fumagalli, a researcher at the University of St Andrews, focusing on Middle Eastern and Caucasian studies. “Given the imbalances between the two militaries, if Azerbaijan decided to proceed with territorial annexation (or Armenian territory) there is little that Armenia could do to stop it.”

However, Azerbaijan’s Deputy Energy Minister Soltanov says that green energy could be a way to broker peace or at least “economic cooperation” between the two countries.