BAKU, Azerbaijan, November 6. Regional cooperation is not an alternative to national energy security but one of its instruments, according to a report by the Eurasian Development Bank (EDB), "Energy Without Borders: Architecture of Energy Connectivity in Central Asia," provided to Trend.
"Central Asia already has something that many regions have to spend decades creating: physical connectivity between power systems, experience in cross-border electricity flows, seasonal complementarity of resources, and institutional memory of parallel operation. However, under new conditions, this advantage is not enough. Growing demand, aging assets, reserve shortages, the accelerated commissioning of renewable energy sources (RES), water and energy constraints, and the development of external corridors are changing the very nature of the regional energy agenda," the report says.
According to the EDB's analysts, the main question is no longer whether Central Asia's power systems are interconnected, but how reliable, manageable, financially sustainable, and acceptable to all participants this connectivity can be.
"In this regard, regional cooperation is not an alternative to national energy security but one of its instruments. The countries of the region retain responsibility for tariff policy, security of supply, and the development of their own energy assets," the report says.
At the same time, the report notes that some challenges already extend beyond national systems: a shortage in one area affects neighboring systems, limited transmission capacity reduces the usefulness of new generation capacity, insufficient reserves increase emergency risks, and uncoordinated water and energy operating regimes diminish the value of hydropower resources.
"Therefore, strengthening national security in the electricity sector increasingly depends on the quality of regional coordination," the EDB report says.
The report shows that the economic value of integration arises not only from selling electricity across borders. A more significant benefit comes from the region's ability to use its resources as a unified reliability portfolio: the grid as a means of delivering capacity, hydropower as a source of flexibility, digital infrastructure as the foundation for confidence in data, market rules as a mechanism for allocating responsibility, and investment projects as a means of removing specific system constraints.
"This approach changes the investment rationale: a project's value is determined not only by its physical parameters, but also by the extent to which it increases available transmission capacity, reduces emergency risks, curbs renewable energy curtailment, improves settlement discipline, and expands opportunities for future trading," the EDB report says.
