Prime Minister Edi Rama held meetings in Fier this Tuesday, discussing achievements and plans regarding electricity. He stated that Albania’s domestic energy production has doubled.
Rama added that with the launch of several projects and the development of innovation, Albania will not only have sufficient energy but will also become an energy-exporting country.
According to him, within this decade, Albania will be energetically and fully independent from any external developments.
“Even if we had the energy sector situation as it was before this transformation, the facts would still be meaningful and make us very optimistic about the future of the sector. And if the future of this sector is optimistic, then the overall development and future of the country is also optimistic.
The fact that today we are talking about almost doubling domestic production is significant.
When you consider that we started this effort with the production base from the communist era — minus the hydropower plants that were oddly removed from the state’s asset stock and handed over to private entities with an argument that in itself is a clear criminal act — it becomes even more meaningful.
Today we have almost double the production compared to where we started. This is not just an increase in production, but also a diversification of the base, which was previously only hydro, carrying a vulnerability even without factoring in climate change — a factor that now makes the future of hydro unpredictable.
Therefore, diversification, with 10% of today’s production coming from solar, along with the launch of several wind energy projects and the extraordinary innovation we are fortunate to have with the water-pumping system, gives us reason to believe that Albania’s full energy independence is near.
Moreover, the transformation from a country with major energy struggles into a net exporter of electricity is close.
These are two historic developments that, if everything proceeds according to our plans — based on the current requests we are managing from investors and what we have scheduled — within this decade, Albania will be energetically and fully independent from any external influence.
It will determine its own energy fate and will transition to a net exporter, meaning not just production, but also transmission has seen significant progress, as has the extension of Albania’s entire transmission network in all directions, with the crown jewel being the agreement with Italy.
From the perspective of losses, we are now within the normal parameters of a European country, whereas previously we were an extraordinary outlier. To find similar cases, one would have had to look far beyond Europe, where energy was distributed based on individuals’ capacity to steal it illegally — or take it legally without paying at all,” Rama said.
