ASTANA – Kazakhstan’s continued reliance on coal is creating challenges that extend beyond decarbonization, affecting the flexibility of the power system, public health and the way households consume energy, experts said at a panel session titled The Role of Coal in Kazakhstan’s Decarbonization during the third Regional Central Asian and European Decarbonization Forum on Sept.
16. Tatiana Lanshina, project lead in Agora Energiewende’s Power System Transformation team, said Kazakhstan’s growing renewable-energy capacity could play a greater role in the electricity mix, but warned that a system dominated by inflexible baseload generation could constrain the integration of wind and solar power.
“The more coal-fired power plants and also nuclear power plants that operate in baseload mode, the less room there will be for large-scale deployment of solar and wind energy,” Lanshina said. Kazakhstan is simultaneously moving ahead with new and modernized coal generation.
The national project on coal-fired generation envisages around 7.8 gigawatts (GW) of new and modernized capacity, while renewable generation continues to expand. In 2025, renewable facilities generated 8.6 billion kilowatt-hours, accounting for 7% of total electricity generation, according to the Ministry of Energy.
Lanshina said the transition is particularly complicated in the heating sector, where replacing coal-fired combined heat and power plants requires finding alternative sources for both electricity and heat. “If we want to replace an old coal-fired power plant with something else, we need to solve not one problem, but two problems.
We also need to find a source of heat,” she said. She pointed to heat pumps, geothermal energy, solar thermal technologies, biogas and electrified heating as potential alternatives. Zhuldyz Saulebekova, Almaty Air Initiative CEO, brought the discussion to the immediate health consequences of coal combustion, arguing that climate policy and air-quality policy should not be treated as separate agendas.
Zhuldyz Saulebekova. Photo credit: Kairzhan Sagyndyk “Very often, when I attend different conferences, especially climate conferences, I hear a lot about efforts to address climate change and decarbonization. But very rarely do I hear about air pollution,” Saulebekova said.
She highlighted Almaty’s CHP-2 and CHP-3 plants, which together burn more than 3.5 million tons of coal annually. The coal comes from Ekibastuz and, according to figures she presented, has an ash content of around 42%. Saulebekova said converting CHP-2 from coal to gas could reduce relevant air pollution by around 12 times.