Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – With the prospect of new Iranian nuclear power plants looking dim after Israeli and American bombing of its civilian nuclear enrichment sites, and with a need to export its fossil gas rather than consuming it domestically, the Tehran leadership is at last turning to renewables for electricity generation. President Masoud Pezeshkian, elected July 2024, said this week that Iran has installed 1 gigawatt of solar capacity since he came into office.
Iran is close to China diplomatically, which is making a bid to become the world’s first advanced electrostate, and Tehran imports its solar panels from that country. Iran is choosing Chinese companies to install solar power plants and set up battery energy storage systems (BESS).
Back in the 1950s, when Egypt and Iran wanted help with major electricity installations, they turned to the United States, then the most advanced country in the world. Now, in post-DOGE Trumpworld, the US scientific establishment is being crippled, the US is widely viewed as a backward and pugnacious oppressor, and Middle Eastern states prefer China as their go-to development partner.
Moreover, the Minister of Energy, Abbas Aliabadi, announced that Iran would install 7 gigawatts of new solar by the end of the year. Aliabadi says that currently Iran is installing 100 megawatts of new solar capacity weekly, which would yield about 5 new gigawatts per annum; so he must be planning to increase this rate of installation substantially.
Iran generates about 94 gigawatts of electricity annually from gas, petroleum, hydroelectric and nuclear plants. Some 80% of power plants, however, run on fossil gas. Iran has added 4 gigawatts of gas electricity generation capacity just so far this year.
The third biggest gas producer in the world, Iran produces some 24 billion cubic feet of fossil gas daily, but uses up 65% of it domestically, which is one reason it faces economic constraints. Qatar produces 17 billion cubic feet of gas daily, but exports almost all of it, an so is one of the wealthier countries in the world — with a sovereign wealth fund of $557 billion.
If Iran could make its electricity from solar instead and sell most of its gas abroad, it would be a much wealthier country. Currently Iraq and Turkey take most Iranian fossil gas.
So, 1 gigawatt of solar is only a little more than 1% of the total, but it is a start. If Iran really can put in 7 gigawatts of new solar this year, then it might begin a transition to renewables for domestic electricity production.
Half of electricity generation is in the public sector, and half is private. Aliabadi appears to view a solar revolution as an opportunity for the private sector to expand its role in the electricity market. He pointed to the extremely important role for the private sector and said that anything the public sector is now doing, the private sector could undertake, and would be provided incentives for doing so.وزیر نیرو در ادامه با اشاره به نقش بسیار مهم بخش خصوصی افزود: همه وظایفی که اکنون بر عهده وزارت نیرو است قابلیت انتقال به بخش خصوصی را دارد. It would be a hell of a note if a substantial private solar power sector took off in Iran even as the one in the United States is gutted by Trump.
Aliabadi characterizes the shift to renewables as the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Iran has opened a lot of small provincial solar power plants, which might only have a capacity 100 or 200 megawatts. Aliabadi stressed the benefits of this localization of energy production.
Photo of solar panels in Yazd, Iran, by Dad hotel on Unsplash
He didn’t say so, but I’m wondering if the Iranian government thinks decentralized solar farms serving small towns and cities are more secure from Israeli bombing raids than big centralized power plants. Iranian officials also stress the localized character of BESS or battery storage, which they see as a positive. Moreover small-scale utility solar and rooftop solar, when paired with batteries, can deliver electricity without requiring a further build-out of transmission wires and without requiring that they be upgraded.
ShahraraNews cautions, however, that putting in 7 new gigawatts of solar depends on permitting and on the technical ability to connect solar farms to the grid, which may make the process lengthier than Aliabadi envisions. Still, Iran is apparently installing a gigawatt every 10 weeks at the moment. With Chinese help and advice and imported Chinese panels, which have dropped in price, Iran could easily produce half its electricity from solar within 10 years if it just keeps doing what it is doing. The signs are, however, that Tehran is becoming more ambitious in this arena, in part for reasons of the self-preservation of the regime.
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