Assessing the Research and Training Needs for Georgian Energy Sector

AYPEG, together with the US NGO – “Partnership for Economic Education and Research” (PEER), worked on a project – “Assessing the Research and Training Needs for Georgian Energy Sector”. The aim of this project was to reveal those problematic topics in Georgian energy sector together with the assessment of the training needs in the sector. The target group consisted of private companies, NGOs, international funds and governmental organizations that operate in the energy sector of Georgia and also large electricity consumers. Out of predefined 56 organizations 41 have been interviewed, the rest either denied the participation in interviews or we were not able to contact them during the project period.

According to the results, there are needs for additional research/analysis in following areas:

• Energy Efficiency (How profitable it is to implement energy efficient technologies for private sector, what should be done for increase the effective usage of the energy etc.);
• Energy Policy (Topics like increase the competition, open the market, also how profitable the integration in the Energy Community is for country and for each private company etc.);
• Electricity tariffs (Tariff methodology; forecasting the results of the implementation the seasonal (or daily) tariffs for the generation units, distributors, consumers and for the sector as whole).
• The project also revealed the training needs in following directions: technical and engineering, hydro power plant construction management and energy audit.