Iraq is advancing a number of solar energy initiatives as a part of a plan to satisfy its electrical energy wants.
Iraq is ready to open its first industrial-scale photo voltaic plant in an unlimited desert space in Karbala as the federal government makes an attempt to sort out an electrical energy disaster that has led to widespread blackouts.
Authorities mentioned the plant, the biggest of its type in Iraq, can be inaugurated on Sunday to ultimately produce as much as 300 megawatts of electrical energy at its peak, based on Iraqi media experiences.
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Tens of 1000’s of black panels are set out in rows in an enormous desert space, spanning some 4,000 dunams (1,000 acres or 400 hectares) within the al-Hur space of Karbala, positioned southwest of capital Baghdad.
Nasser Karim al-Sudani, head of the nationwide workforce for photo voltaic power initiatives within the Iraqi prime minister’s workplace, mentioned one other undertaking underneath building in Babil province can have a capability of 225 megawatts, and work will even start quickly on a 1,000-megawatt undertaking within the southern province of Basra.
قطاع الطاقة 🇮🇶 | الاول في العراق.. صحراء محافظة كربلاء المقدسة تكتسي بالألواح الشمسية مع تواصل مشروع انشاء محطة كهرباء للطاقة الشمسية ستولد 300 ميغاواط من الطاقة الكهربائية pic.twitter.com/ZTn9MwArat
— مشاريع العراق – Iraq initiatives (@IraqTasks) July 29, 2025
Translation: The first in Iraq. The desert of the holy Karbala Governorate is roofed with photo voltaic panels because the undertaking to ascertain a solar energy plant continues, which can generate 300 megawatts {of electrical} power.
The initiatives are half of a bigger imaginative and prescient to account for a portion of Iraq’s electrical energy wants utilizing large-scale solar energy vegetation that might assist ease the electrical energy disaster whereas additionally decreasing the destructive environmental influence of fuel emissions.
Deputy Minister of Electricity Adel Karim mentioned Iraq has photo voltaic initiatives with a mixed capability of 12,500 megawatts both being applied, within the approval course of, or underneath negotiation. Barring the semi-autonomous northern Kurdistan area of Iraq, the initiatives might probably provide as much as 20 % of Iraq’s complete electrical energy demand, based on the official.
But regardless of its huge oil and fuel assets, Iraq continues to face – because it has for many years – electrical energy shortages rooted in struggle, corruption and mismanagement.
Nationwide electrical energy consumption peaked at about 55,000 megawatts this summer time as scorching temperatures exceeded 50 levels Celsius (122 levels Fahrenheit) in some areas.
This is whereas deputy minister Karim mentioned the nation is now producing as much as 28,000 megawatts of electrical energy, together with about 8,000 megawatts fuelled by pure fuel imported from neighbouring Iran and fed to energy vegetation in Iraq.
The important provides from Iran have confronted many challenges through the years as nicely, significantly from unilateral sanctions imposed by the United States in an effort to strain Tehran and squeeze its income streams amid a standoff over Iran’s nuclear programme and navy capabilities.
In March, Washington introduced it was ending a sanctions waiver that allowed Iraq to straight buy electrical energy from Iran, which wanted to be renewed each 120 days. The US has, for now, left one other waiver in place that lets Iraq purchase Iranian pure fuel to feed its energy vegetation.
Iran can also be dealing with a number of crises, together with huge power shortages, a problem that has affected its exports to Iraq.
