BAKU, Azerbaijan, Nov. 1
Trend:
The largest share in the volume of domestic demand for primary energy resources in Kazakhstan (excluding mined uranium) until 2050 will account for coal (37 percent), Trend reports referring to the baseline scenario of UK’s IHS Markit company.
According to the scenario, the coal will be followed by gas (31 percent), oil (24 percent) and primary electricity (eight percent).
"In the primary electricity sector, from our point of view, wind energy has an exceptional growth potential in the forecast period. Starting from 2045, the volume of electricity generation by wind farms is expected to exceed the volume of hydropower, and in 2050 - according to the baseline scenario - it will reach 14 billion kWh (nearly 10 percent of the total generation)," the company said.
"We also assume that during the scenario period - starting from the mid-2030s - the fuel balance of the electric power industry will be replenished with nuclear energy, but its share in the total generation volume will remain relatively moderate."
"Net exports of primary energy resources from Kazakhstan, about 80 percent of which was recently oil, decreased by 5.6 percent to 89.2 million toe [tons of oil equivalent] in 2020 due to turmoil in global oil markets resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. The net exports will decline further in 2021, after which - in 2022 - they will rebound, and, starting from 2025, will again exceed the level observed before the COVID-19 pandemic," the company said.
According to the baseline scenario, in 2025, primary energy exports will reach their maximum level (104 million toe), and will slide to 56.1 million toe over most of the remaining forecast period in 2050.
As a result, the net indicator of the decline in primary energy exports in 2021-2050 will amount to 37.1 percent, which is due to the expected decline in the longer term in almost all export categories.
So, according to the baseline scenario, oil exports will reach a maximum level (80.2 million toe) in 2035, after which it will decrease to 52.6 million toe in 2050; coal exports will drop to 5.5 million toe in 2050; and in the early 2040's, Kazakhstan will turn from a net exporter to a net importer of gas.
The forecast that Kazakhstan will become a net importer of gas in early 2040 is based on the assumptions that demand for it will increase (partly due to the accelerated transition from coal to gas in the electric power industry), while the country's production of marketable gas won’t grow in the long term.
"On the other hand, the export flow of primary electricity in the aggregate will increase slightly during the forecast period, but its volumes will remain very modest (roughly 0.1 million toe per year). One of the few positives during the pandemic was the continued decline in the energy intensity of the Kazakh economy, a long-term trend that has been observed since 1991," the company said.
In 2020, energy intensity - measured in million toe consumed to produce $1 million of GDP (in real dollar terms for 2005) - declined in Kazakhstan by 0.1 percent to 356.6 toe (for the period from 2000 through 2020, the total decrease in energy intensity was 37.7 percent).
"Kazakhstan continues to show relatively high levels of energy intensity globally, but it’s expected to make more significant achievements in this area over the forecast period than it did in the past – from 2021 through 2050 the energy intensity is expected to decrease by 55 percent to 160.7 toe," concluded the company.
