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KARBALA: Iraq is set to open the country’s first industrial-scale solar plant Sunday in a vast expanse of desert in Karbala province, southwest of Baghdad.
It’s part of a new push by the government to expand renewable energy production in a country that is frequently beset by electricity crises despite being rich in oil and gas.
“This is the first project of its type in Iraq that has this capacity,” said Safaa Hussein, executive director of the new solar plant in Karbala, standing in front of row after row of black panels. From above, the project looks like a black-clad city surrounded by sand.
The plant aims to “supply the national network with electricity, and reduce the fuel consumption especially during the daytime peak load, in addition to reducing the negative environmental impact of gas emissions,” he said.
The newly opened solar plant in Karbala will eventually be able to produce up to 300 megawatts of electricity at its peak, said Nasser Karim Al-Sudani, head of the national team for solar energy projects in the Prime Minister’s Office. Another project under construction in Babil province will have a capacity of 225 megawatts, and work will also begin soon on a 1,000 megawatt project in the southern province of Basra, he said.
The projects are part of an ambitious plan to implement large-scale solar power projects in an effort to ease the country’s chronic electricity shortages.
Deputy Minister of Electricity Adel Karim said Iraq has solar projects with a combined capacity of 12,500 megawatts either being implemented, in the approval process, or under negotiation. If fully realized, these projects would supply between 15 percent and 20 percent of Iraq’s total electricity demand, excluding the semi-autonomous northern Kurdish region, he said.
“All the companies we have contracted with, or are still negotiating with, will sell us electricity at very attractive prices, and we will in turn sell it to consumers,” Karim said, although he declined to disclose the purchase rates.
Despite its oil and gas wealth, Iraq has suffered from decades of electricity shortages because of war, corruption and mismanagement. Power outages are common, especially in the scorching summer months. Many Iraqis have to rely on diesel generators or suffer through temperatures that exceed 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) without air conditioning.
Currently, Iraq produces between 27,000 and 28,000 megawatts of electricity, Karim said, while nationwide consumption ranges from 50,000 to 55,000 megawatts. Power plants fueled by Iranian gas contribute about 8,000 megawatts of the current supply.
Iraq’s heavy reliance on imported Iranian gas, as well as electricity imported directly from Iran to meet its electricity needs, is an arrangement that risks running afoul of US sanctions.
Earlier this year, Washington ended a sanctions waiver for direct electricity purchases from Iran but left the waiver for gas imports in place.

GENEVA: Sudan has seen a significant rise in civilian killings during the first half of this year due to growing ethnic violence, largely in the western region of Darfur, the UN human rights office said on Friday.

The conflict that erupted in Sudan in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces has unleashed waves of ethnically-driven killings, caused mass displacement, and created what the UN has called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
At least 3,384 civilians were killed between January and June, mostly in Darfur, according to a new report by the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights. The figure is equivalent to nearly 80 percent of the civilian casualties in Sudan documented last year. 
Throughout the war, casualty numbers have been hard to track because of the collapse of local health services, fighting, and communications breakdowns, among other reasons.
“Every day we are receiving more reports of horrors on the ground,” OHCHR Sudan representative Li Fung said in Geneva.
The majority of killings resulted from artillery shelling as well as air and drone strikes in densely populated areas, the report said.
It noted many deaths occurred during the RSF’s offensive on the city of El-Fasher, the last holdout of its rivals in Darfur, as well as on the Zamzam and Abu Shouk camps for displaced people in April.
At least 990 civilians were killed in summary executions in the first half of the year, the report found, with the number between February and April tripling. That was driven mainly by a surge in Khartoum after the army and allied fighters in late March recaptured the city previously controlled by the RSF, the OHCHR said.
“One witness who observed SAF search operations in civilian neighborhoods in East Nile, Khartoum, between March and April, said that he saw children as young as 14 or 15 years of age, accused of being RSF members, summarily killed,” OHCHR spokesperson Jeremy Laurence said.
Fung said ethnicity was a motivating factor for violence, which she described as very concerning.
She explained that certain ethnic communities were being targeted because they are associated with the leadership of the SAF and RSF, building upon decades of discrimination and division between different groups and identities in the diverse nation.
Both sides in Sudan’s war have repeatedly denied deliberately attacking civilians.
The humanitarian situation in Sudan was dire and worsening, said Patrick Youssef, Africa regional director for the International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent.
Sudan faces its worst cholera outbreak in four years across the country, with 2,500 cases reported in Khartoum since June, he said.
“We really pray that it’s contained within days or weeks ... My worst nightmare would be a bigger spread in Khartoum, if the populations want to return back to Khartoum,” he said.