TEHRAN, Iran, Aug.23
Trend:
The spokesman for the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Organization has revealed the new government plans for the development of renewable electricity.
Financial resources for the purchase of renewable electricity were provided via a guaranteed electricity purchase contract that was paid from electricity bills, Mohammadnejad Sigaroudi told Trend in an interview.
The predicted budget for this purpose in the current Iranian year (started March 21, 2021) is $450 million.
"We tried to use the financial resources from money generated by saving fuel in recent years, but our effort was not responded by the Ministry of Oil and Plan and Budget Organization did not help either," he noted.
For the first time, $595 million has been assigned for the guaranteed purchase of renewable electricity from the budget in the current Iranian year but unfortunately, the Plan and Budget Organization was involved in so much bureaucracy during the first five months of the current Iranian year that it could not provide the budget.
"We hope the Ministry of Oil would comply with its legal duty and the Plan and Budget Organization would provide these resources. This budget can be used to pay our debts and use to buy electricity from private sector investors in the field of renewable energy, " he explained.
In this plan, the government does not pay for costs to the private sector for the installation of power plants. The private sector would sell their products in form of a Build-Own-Operate (BOO) contract to the oil ministry.
The official evaluated guaranteed electricity purchase contract from the private sector saying it was expected that the government would pay for the private sector's renewable electricity bi-monthly, but lack of resources and cooperation of the Plan and Budget Organization put SATBA in debt to the private sector.
In this regard, if anyone reduces power consumption during the power production stage, the Ministry of Oil is legally obligated to pay the money from power savings to the ministry of energy for the guaranteed purchase of renewable electricity.
