Future Energy was the theme of the World Expo held in 2017 in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan. It was chosen by the host country to highlight their wish to lead renewable development in Central Asia and source 50% of its total energy consumption from alternative and renewable energy by 2050.
The plan is ambitious: The relatively young state, which declared its independence from the USSR in 1991, is blessed—and cursed—with rich coal, oil, and gas resources, which have contributed to a high rate of economic growth. Furthermore, Kazakhstan has a 40 year reserves-to-production ratio for oil, 35 years for gas, and 150 years for coal. Therefore, electricity is generated mainly from burning fossil fuels, which is not only a relatively inexpensive form of power generation, but also the most established one for industrial and domestic use. In fact, many rural households in the poorer regions still use coal for heating purposes.
Thus, it comes as no surprise that about 75% of the country’s electricity demand is still covered by coal, while renewables represent less than 1% of all power generation, excluding hydropower, which has a share of around 10% in the power mix.
The country reported CO2 emissions (from the burning of fossil fuels and cement manufacture) at ∼14 metric tons per capita in 2014, a number that placed it 18th in a list of countries where Qatar leads with 45.4 metric tons, Saudi Arabia and the United States have 19.5 and 16.6 metric tons, respectively, followed by Germany (8.9), and China (7.5). Along with an increase in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions since 1991, economic growth has brought a steady increase in electricity consumption. As a result, the energy sector is facing big challenges: Aging coal-fired plants and inefficient power transmission networks, combined with lack of maintenance and investment, are causing losses and occasional shortages in the electricity supply.
Adopting renewable energy technologies can help the country to reduce its GHG emissions. It ensures additional generating capacity and reduces electricity imports and power network losses. Kazakhstan’s landscape and climate, with windblown steppes occupying almost one-third of its northern and central territory and the sun shining between 2000 and 3000 hours each year, seem to enforce the idea that the country has a huge potential for solar and wind power.
Thus, Kazakhstan’s government set out to increase the share of renewable sources in the electric mix, from the current 1%, to 3% by 2020, 30% by 2030, and 50% by 2050, according to the “Kazakhstan Strategy—2050” that was introduced in 2012. This year, the ministry of energy stated that ∼114 MW from alternative sources was produced in 2017, which was 22% more than in the previous year. The plan for 2018 is ∼310 MW.
To achieve its short- and long-term goals, Kazakhstan will need a lot more than wind and sun. For example, Germany, one of the global solar leaders, receives a lot less sunlight annually than any state in the United States besides Alaska, indicating that the price of the electricity and the policies implemented by the government play a huge role for successful solar investments. Additionally, the support of local science projects and a change in people’s mentality are also urgently needed.
A 2016 World Bank Report describes how Kazakhstan emerged from the Soviet Union with a well-educated and scientifically literate, but dramatically smaller, labor force that had to fight its research battles with outdated equipment in a bureaucratic scene that was not organ-ized to link knowledge and markets.
Almagul Mentbayeva, a senior researcher at Nazarbayev University, in Astana, who also works for the Institute of Batteries LLC, specializes in advanced materials synthesis and characterization for energy storage systems. Her team, under the lead of Zhumabay Bakenov, has been working to prototype a lithium-sulfur battery electrode and a lithium-ion water battery.
Lithium-sulfur batteries have been thrown into the spotlight because of their potential to achieve higher energy density than lithium-ion battery technology. Sulfur as a cathode has an excellent theoretical gravimetric discharge capacity of 1672 mA h/g, while lithium-cobalt (LiCoO2), the current popular choice for cathode material in mobile phones, laptops, and digital cameras, has 275 mA h/g.
But sulfur as an insulator also has low mass-loading, which leads to low capacity. Furthermore, undesired dissolution of lithium polysulfide ((Li2S)n, 3 ≤ n ≤ 8) species into the elec-trolyte results in capacity fading. As a result, Li-S batteries suffer from low electronic conductivity and low cycle life.
Mentbayeva and her team have been trying different approaches to solve the issue, mainly by developing new composites and trying encapsulation of the cathode as well as heat and chemical–mechanical treatment. At the same time, they developed several sizes of the prototype and have tried to find markets for it.
“We partly solved the technical problems, and there is definitely interest from the domestic market, as well as the military,” she said, “because batteries created for European countries, for example, are not working in the extreme weather conditions of Kazakhstan.” But two issues remain difficult to overcome: “First, all of the materials we used had to be imported, something that significantly raises the costs,” said Mentbayeva. In addition, although the team is able to construct the electrode, there is no facility that can assemble a real battery prototype, which is a request of potential customers.
Yelena Kalyuzhnova, director at the Centre for Euro-Asian Studies and professor at the University of Reading, discussed the hurdles of commercialization for projects that involve renewable technologies. “Although the crème de la crème of society supports these new ideas, you actually need [the] understanding and support of every family and person in the country. People do not like change, and a change in mentality can be really slow, which can create many excuses as to why we should not put a new technology at the commercial level.”
According to Kalyuzhnova, people in key positions in the industry find it hard to connect scientific results with real life problems. “There is lack of information about renewables, and as long as the market fails to appreciate and understand the public benefit of it, it will take a long time before we see wind turbines and solar panels replacing coal plants,” she said.
Damir Aidarkhanov is a research assistant and one of the first who helped to es-tablish the Laboratory of Solar Energetics at the Center for Energy and AdvancedMaterials Science at Nazarbayev Univer-sity. He has firsthand experience in the Kazakhstan Sustainable Energy Financing Facility of the European Bank for Recon-struction and Development. The project’s goal was to transfer knowledge and build expertise, among both banks and companies, showing the energy efficiency and benefits of renewable energy measures.
Since 2011, Aidarkhanov has worked to develop third-generation organic photovoltaic solar cells. This year, his team has started research on perovskite solar cells, drawn by the potential to develop a low-cost, industry-scalable technology for devices with high efficiency.
In 2012, the Astana solar manufacturing plant was launched as part of the State Program for Accelerated Industrial-Innovative Development of Kazakhstan. The purpose was to create a fully vertically integrated production cycle of photovoltaic modules to extract and process Kazakhstani silicon for the assembly of solar panels. Around the same time, Solar Silicon was also founded, a startup company engaged in the production of silicon photovoltaic cells.
Examples of the materials produced at the Institute of Batteries, in Astana. (a) A freestanding composite cathode for lithium-sulfur batteries, composed of sulfur, dehydrogenated polyacrylonitrile, and multiwalled carbon nanotubes. (b) A battery stack assembled with cells that contain a sulfur/polyacrylonitrile/ketjenblack (a mixture of carbon black with plastic, rubber, or other materials) composite cathode. (c) A graph that exhibits stable cycling performance of this battery. Credit: Almagul Mentbayeva.
Both are subsidiaries of KazAtomProm, a company responsible for the import and export of uranium, rare metals, and nuclear fuel in Kazakhstan. They were expected to be a driver of Kazakhstan’s planned industrial diversification that would help develop the country’s renewable energy technologies sector. However, their performance has been lackluster, and KazAtomProm has been seeking investors to take over the companies. Production at Solar Silicon was suspended in May 2018.
Efforts in establishing themselves in international renewables science has been intense for the Kazakhs. Kalyuzhnova believes that Kazakhstan, at the moment, cannot afford renewables. “The country has a budget, but it is clearly not enough, and investors are needed. This is a financially risky area for traditional funding institutions, and Kazakhstan is looking now at Islamic finance for its green projects,” she said.
This year, Kazakhstan established a renewable energy auction policy and intends to tender 1 GW of power capacity. Successful companies will sell electricity to the settlements and tariffs department under a 15-year contract. In the first round of auctions in May, the government awarded just under 100 MW for wind projects. Nineteen contracts were signed for solar, wind, water and bio-gas energy, and more participants are expected for the second round that will be held later this year. According to Saltanat Rakhimbekova, chairwoman at the Coalition for a Green Economy, “As a result of the renewable energy auction held in our country, the price for solar energy made 4.8 cents per kW, which is a more competitive price.”
In this ambitious country, which depicts a golden sun and an eagle carried by the wind in its flag, Kazakh scientists have great hope. “We are ready for the hard and creative work,” said Aidarkhanov, “and with enough funding, we can make the next big steps.”
