The Georgia green energy corridor agreement signed in Antalya on November 10 gives Tbilisi a formal seat in one of the region’s most ambitious energy projects: a four-country plan with Azerbaijan, Turkey and Bulgaria to move renewable electricity from the South Caucasus into European markets. The intergovernmental document was signed on the sidelines of the COP31 climate conference in Turkey.
Georgia’s Minister of Economy Mariam Kvrivishvili signed alongside Azerbaijan’s Energy Minister Parviz Shahbazov, Turkey’s Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar and Bulgaria’s Energy Minister Iva Petrova. The agreement covers the development of existing power transmission lines between the four countries, the construction of new infrastructure and the expansion of electricity exports to Europe.
Under the arrangement, each country will designate its electricity transmission system operator, and those operators will become shareholders in a joint venture being established to implement the project. The transmission capacity of the corridor is projected to reach between 2,000 and 3,000 megawatts. Officials in Tbilisi present the Georgia green energy corridor agreement as the overland half of a two-route strategy that is meant to anchor the country’s place in the region’s energy geography.
What the Georgia green energy corridor agreement offers Tbilisi
For Georgia, the immediate prize is choice. The economy ministry in Tbilisi explained that the corridor will enable Georgia to diversify its electricity export destinations and supply green electricity generated in the country to European markets. Georgia’s hydropower-heavy system produces seasonal surpluses, and a westward route with real capacity turns those surpluses into a strategic export rather than a domestic management problem.
Kvrivishvili said the four countries had agreed to join efforts to further develop the overland power transmission lines between them, to facilitate more effective exports of electricity generated in their states to European Union nations with expanded capacity. Turkey’s energy minister described the scheme as an electricity version of the TANAP gas pipeline, while Azerbaijan’s Shahbazov called it a crucial step toward a green energy corridor that would turn his country into an interregional electricity hub.
Bulgaria’s energy ministry clarified that the Georgia green energy corridor agreement also provides for the integration of the four power grids, and that the parties will outline the technical, commercial and regulatory conditions needed for safe, reliable and uninterrupted transmission. The project also includes fiber-optic communications and data transmission along the route.
Two corridors at once under the Georgia green energy corridor agreement
The Antalya signing is only half of Georgia’s corridor strategy. In parallel with the overland route agreed this week, Georgia is involved in a second initiative to lay a power cable along the bed of the Black Sea, connecting its grid directly with Romania. A strategic partnership for that project was signed by Georgia, Azerbaijan, Romania and Hungary in December 2022.
The submarine and overland line would span approximately 1,155 kilometers with a planned capacity of 1,300 megawatts. The Italian consulting firm CESI completed the feasibility study and confirmed the project’s technical and economic viability, and in February 2026 Georgian State Electrosystem signed an additional agreement with CESI on preparing and overseeing geophysical and geotechnical surveys of the Black Sea seabed. Georgia’s state budget has allocated 50 million lari to the submarine cable project for 2026 and 2027, with financing provided by the World Bank.
Holding both projects at once is deliberate. The overland corridor runs through Turkey, the submarine cable runs under the Black Sea, and together they would make Georgia the junction through which Caspian and Caucasus electricity reaches Europe by two independent paths. Few countries of Georgia’s size occupy that kind of position on an energy map.
The caveats are familiar ones. No construction timelines or investment volumes for the new quadrilateral agreement have been made public, and intergovernmental signatures are the easiest part of any corridor. Energy history in the Caucasus is full of announced corridors that never carried a single watt, and skeptics will judge this one by financing and steel, not by signatures. But with a joint venture to form, operators to designate and a seabed survey already contracted on the parallel route, the Georgia green energy corridor agreement looks less like a declaration and more like the next document in a file that keeps getting thicker. If the partners follow through, the Georgia green energy corridor agreement could be remembered as the moment Tbilisi stopped being only a transit country for other people’s pipelines and became a switchboard for the region’s electricity.
Source: SOVA News