Four nations sign clean power corridor pact at COP31

Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia and Türkiye signed an intergovernmental agreement on strategic partnership in clean energy in Antalya on 10 November 2026, on the sidelines of the COP31 climate conference, Azerbaijan's Ministry of Energy said. The document was signed by Azerbaijani Energy Minister Parviz Shahbazov, Türkiye's Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Alparslan Bayraktar, Georgia's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development Mariam Kvrivishvili, and Bulgaria's Minister of Energy Iva Petrova.

The agreement moves the Azerbaijan-Georgia-Türkiye-Bulgaria green energy corridor from a memorandum to a formal agreement between governments. It commits the four states to cooperate on the transmission and supply of clean electricity, to set conditions for secure and uninterrupted transmission, and to expand fibre-optic communications along the project. What it does not yet contain, at least in the published summaries, is a capacity figure, a cost estimate or a construction schedule.

From memorandum to agreement

The signing is the third formal step in roughly 19 months. The same four countries signed a memorandum of understanding in Baku on 4 April 2025 under what was then called the Green Electricity Transmission and Trade Project. In May 2026 their transmission system operators agreed to set up a joint company to finance the feasibility study and manage the project directly, according to AZERTAC.

Mr Bayraktar has been the project's most vocal promoter. Speaking in Baku in September, he said Ankara wanted to "crown this project with an important signing process" at COP31, and he has repeatedly called the route the "TANAP of electricity", a reference to the gas pipeline that carries Azerbaijani gas across Anatolia. After the signing, he wrote on the Turkish social platform NSosyal: "At a time when electrification is accelerating, this step will strengthen energy ties between our countries," Daily Sabah reported, citing Anadolu Agency.

What the corridor is meant to do

The stated aim, according to the ministry, as also reported by Report, is to export electricity from Azerbaijan's renewable sources to Türkiye and European markets, strengthen the partners' energy security and turn Azerbaijan into an interregional electricity hub. The only capacity figure on record comes from earlier statements: in September Mr Shahbazov said the corridor would start with an initial transmission capacity of 1 GW, routed through Azerbaijan's Nakhchivan exclave. The ministry had described sending 1 GW from Nakhchivan to Türkiye at the initial stage as a promising prospect after a meeting of the two energy ministers in Istanbul, reported on 1 August.

That routing matters. Nakhchivan borders Türkiye but is cut off from the rest of Azerbaijan, so the corridor depends on a separate Azerbaijan (Nakhchivan) to Türkiye interconnector that system operators are still studying. It also runs parallel to, rather than in place of, the Caspian-Black Sea-Europe green energy corridor, which would carry power from Azerbaijan and Georgia under the Black Sea towards the European Union.

What to watch

Three things will show whether the agreement has teeth. The first is ratification: as an intergovernmental agreement, it may need approval by national parliaments before it takes effect. The second is the feasibility study run by the joint operator company, which should finally put numbers on capacity beyond the initial 1 GW, on cost and on a timetable. The third is financing, since neither the ministries nor the APA report from Antalya named lenders or investors. For Bulgaria, the entry point into the EU grid, the question is how much transit capacity it can offer without new cross-border lines of its own.

Sources: Ministry of Energy of Azerbaijan; Ministry of Energy of Azerbaijan (August); APA; APA (September); Report; Daily Sabah; Daily Sabah (April 2025); Daily Sabah (September); AZERTAC