Azerbaijan, Türkiye, Georgia and Bulgaria signed a multi-state Strategic Partnership Agreement in Clean Energy on 10 November 2026 on the sidelines of the COP31 climate summit in Antalya, formalising years of conceptual planning into binding infrastructure commitments. The agreement, signed by Azerbaijan's Energy Minister Parviz Shahbazov, Türkiye's Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Alparslan Bayraktar, Georgia's Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development Mariam Kvrivishvili, and Bulgaria's Minister of Energy Iva Petrova, aims to develop a high-capacity transmission network exporting wind and solar energy generated in the Caspian basin directly to Eastern and Central Europe.
The core objective is to physically integrate renewable grids across the four countries and establish a direct electricity transit route from the Caspian Sea to European markets, diversifying transmission routes and ensuring long-term regional energy security. The infrastructure will rely on expanding existing overland high-voltage lines through the South Caucasus and Türkiye, with a crucial component involving parallel enhancement of fibre-optic communications along the transit route to ensure secure, uninterrupted transmission and modern grid management.
Integrating the South Caucasus power network directly with Bulgaria establishes a vital new energy artery into the broader European Union grid, directly addressing Eastern Europe's urgent macroeconomic mandate to diversify energy imports and reduce historical reliance on legacy fossil fuel corridors. The partnership is expected to provide European consumer markets with a stable, alternative supply of decarbonised electricity, while distributing the immense financial and technical burdens of grid modernisation across four distinct national economies to create a highly structured environment that lowers logistical risks for international investors, private equity firms and development banks expected to fund upcoming construction phases.
Throughout the COP31 summit, the Azerbaijan Pavilion functioned as a central hub for detailing the logistical and financial scope of these cross-border projects, highlighting the 'Corridor of Dialogue' concept and framing the strategic Azerbaijan-Türkiye energy interconnection as the foundational backbone for the wider four-nation initiative. Minister Shahbazov held intensive bilateral meetings with international renewable companies including Vestas, ACWA Power and NKT to discuss parallel development of power generation, energy storage and cross-border grids, stating the ministry is actively turning previous COP grid agendas into concrete projects physically connecting producer nations with consumer markets.
Source: Euronews. Read the original report ↗