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| Fig. 1: Tunisia Map. (Source: Wikimedia Commons) |
Tunisia is a country in North Africa (see Fig. 1) with a population of 12 million. Its GDP is about $40 billion. In 2019, Tunisia generated about 22.096 TWh of electricity. The primary source of which is non renewable which generated 21.272 TWh in 2019 followed by wind energy which generated 500 GWh in the same year. [1] Tunisia made some efforts in order to diversify its energy mix by focusing more on renewable sources. In 2019, 10 MW Tozeur 1 solar power plant was commissioned and a similar project Tozeur 2 was under construction. Since the year 2000, Tunisia has been an importer of natural gas and oil. The Tunisian Company of Electricity and Gas (STEG) started subsidizing the prices of consumer electricity in 2004. [2] As the Tunisian currency got weaker and the economic deficit kept increasing, the government reform in 2013 reduced the subsidies in order to make up 1% of GDP in annual budgetary savings. In fact, in 2019, about 50% of Tunisia's energy was imported. Energy import has cost Tunisia 9867 Million Tnd in 2019. [3]
In 2006, the head of STEG announced that Tunisia planned to have its first Nuclear Power Plant up and running by 2020. [4] Tunisia was to have had its first nuclear power station in 2020, allowing it to produce 900 megawatts of electricity, the equivalent of 20 percent of the country's energy needs. This was a response to Tunisia's growing need for energy imports, which were pretty costly for the country's fragile economy. However, due to political and civic unrest, Tunisia had a revolution in 2011 and has had 9 different prime ministers since. This, among other factors, led to the country still being stuck at the very first steps of the IAEA milestones, and with no nuclear power plant having been built by 2022. [5] In 2015, Tunisia signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Russia which wss supposed to lay a foundation for cooperation between the two countries in clean nuclear energy use. [6] The MOU aimed to help Tunisia with its infrastructure for nuclear energy development as well as research. As of today, Tunisia still had not moved into any actionable items with this MOU.
© Khalil Miri. The author warrants that the work is the author's own and that Stanford University provided no input other than typesetting and referencing guidelines. The author grants permission to copy, distribute and display this work in unaltered form, with attribution to the author, for noncommercial purposes only. All other rights, including commercial rights, are reserved to the author.
[1] "Energy Profile: Tunisia," International Renewable Energy Agency, September 2021.
[2] R. Bridle, L. Kiston, and P. Wooders, Fossil-Fuel Subsidies: A Barrier to Renewable Energy in Five Middle East and North African Countries," International Institute for Sustainable Development, September 2014.
[3] Z.Hamedi et al., "The Republic of Tunisia: Renewables Readiness Assessment," International Renewable Energy Agency, 2021.
[4] "Tunisia Plans Nuclear Power Plant by 2020," Reuters, 31 Jan 07.
[5]"Convention on Nuclear Safety," Republic of Tunisia, August 2019.
[6] A. Theron, "Tunisia Signs with Russia for Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy," ESI Africa, 28 Sep 16.
