Wind energy in Iran: 4th Iranian Wind Power Congress

Iran unveiled plans for its first tender for utility-scale renewable energy projects last week. This announcement happened just before the 4th Iranian Wind Power Congress. WindEurope CEO Giles Dickson gave the keynote speech at the Energy Ministry in front of 500 people and pointed to the tremendous potential of one of the largest wind power markets in the Middle East.

Growing thirst for energy and dwindling water supply have led the Iranian government look into upscaling renewable alternatives. Mr Dickson showed that wind power is competitive, clean and efficient. It not only mitigates climate change but onshore wind power is already one of the cheapest sources of new electricity generation. In Europe, the wind power industry attracted more than €26bn of investments last year and provides over 300,000 jobs today. Whilst other fuels burden economies owing to unpredictable costs, wind power hedges against price shocks and gets more efficient every year.

Iran has only 120MW of wind power installed today, yet the Islamic Republic has a wind power potential of over 30GW. The existing feed-in tariff and lifting the sanctions send a strong signal to Western investors, and some of WindEurope’s members – namely Siemens, Nordex and Vestas – have already expressed their interest in cooperating. Facilitating financing and developing the grid are now key to unlock these win(d)-win(d) situations.