By Siranush Adamyan
Amazon is ready to invest in Armenia if the country can provide the reliable, round-the-clock electricity supply the company needs, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said in an interview with Infocom published on Tuesday.
Pashinyan cited a letter he received that morning from the minister of high-tech industry outlining potential investments and their energy requirements.
“Amazon is ready to invest in Armenia, but it needs a 1,000-megawatt power plant. It says: if you can confirm that there will be a 1,000-megawatt plant, I will make investments of a corresponding scale in Armenia,” Pashinyan said.
He did not specify the size of the potential investment, the nature of the project or a timeline.
Asked whether a solar plant could meet that demand, Pashinyan said the company needed a stable electricity supply around the clock. He discussed the need for nuclear generation, energy storage and wind power.
According to Pashinyan, the electricity requirements of already approved artificial intelligence projects in Armenia exceed the country’s existing energy capacity. He cited new investment projects as a reason for the government’s growing interest in a larger nuclear power plant.
Pashinyan had previously discussed building a nuclear power plant in Armenia using small modular reactor technology. On October 1, however, he said a 1,000-megawatt nuclear plant could be the most logical solution for the country. Two days earlier, Rosatom Director General Alexey Likhachev had presented Russian proposals for a new nuclear plant during a visit to Yerevan.
Ara Marjanyan, a United Nations national energy expert in Armenia, told CivilNet that Russia currently had the most developed proposal in engineering and economic terms. He argued that Armenia needed a proven technology that could be operational by 2036–2037.
The operating reactor at Armenia’s Metsamor nuclear power plant is scheduled to remain in service until 2036. The government has set the end of 2027 as the deadline for selecting its replacement technology.
Pashinyan also stressed that renewable energy remained a priority. He said Armenia aimed to develop solar and wind generation, storage facilities and green hydrogen, both to meet growing domestic demand and to export electricity.
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