Today, at the Government Meeting, we made an important decision regarding the initiation of tender procedures for the construction of wind energy capacities of 150 MW.

The Government of the Republic of Kosovo, with the support of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) as the lead transaction advisor, and with the support of USAID, who also were supporters during the very successful first solar auction, plans to launch new competitive projects for the construction of 150 MW wind energy capacities in October 2024.

Today, at the Government meeting, as you saw, we made a decision to authorize the initiation of tender procedures for these generation capacities and to provide support for them.

The tender documentation and the scheme will be prepared in the coming months, will be proposed, and will be treated within the Public-Private Partnership Committee. Through these steps, we aim to further advance our goals of creating a more secure, sustainable, and cleaner energy sector.

During the design and implementation of the project, we will follow high standards of transparency and fairness, which were at the highest level during the first solar auction, resulting in a very successful auction and a highly transparent process.

The construction of 150 MW wind capacities will be divided into two competitive processes and will offer power purchase agreements for at least 15 years. In this way, we aim to ensure broad competition, while also enabling the use of existing reliable data regarding wind measurements to optimize both the selection of locations and the feasibility of the projects.

The projects are planned to include the component of public-private partnership (PPP), which will be realized for the first time in such a project in the region and, through this, we aim to encourage private sector investments and demonstrate our commitment to these projects, facilitate financial support, and reduce project risk, ultimately resulting in the lowest possible prices for consumers.

Since April 2023, we have been working as a government, which has led to this decision and the start of this process. In April 2023, the Minister of Finance, Labor, and Transfers, Hekuran Murati, signed an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), through which 50 million euros are secured to support our country’s Energy Strategy.

The Ministry of Economy aims to use these funds to co-invest in the wind projects we are discussing today, and as I mentioned, to ensure that as a state we can contribute to the project investment, while also reducing the project cost as much as possible and ultimately securing the lowest possible prices for consumers.

In March of this year, we, the Ministry of Economy, signed an agreement with the IFC for support in the development of wind projects. In this way, the IFC as a partner has joined this process, where preparatory work began with USAID during the previous year.

On 23 April 2024, on behalf of the Ministry of Economy, I made a request to the Energy Regulatory Office (ERO) to assess the achievement of RES targets and the objectives of the Strategy through authorization procedures, and thereafter, on 31 May 2024, the ERO decided that the 150 MW wind auction project would not be subject to the authorization procedure and would be implemented in accordance with the Law on Public-Private Partnership, paving the way for today’s decision.

At the beginning of this month, we, as a ministry, published an Information Brief with preliminary technical information for wind project developers interested in competing. Through this information, we ensure that potential bidders are informed and can take the necessary steps to prepare for application as early as possible. However, the technical criteria we have published are not yet final and may be reviewed until the official publication of these competitive projects.

The first project is expected to be announced in October of this year, while the second project is expected to be announced in the following year. Each of them is expected to have a capacity of around 75 MW, but this may be lower or higher, depending on competition and the level of capacities offered.

All these are important steps that enable us to move towards a cleaner energy sector and implement our Energy Strategy, which is quite ambitious, however, as we have said from the beginning, with the work and commitment of all national and international stakeholders, is fully achievable.

Thank you, and good luck to all of us in this project!