Kazakhstan is vigorously developing its renewable energy sector with the support of Chinese enterprises, bringing lucrative job opportunities to locals.
Since 2020, Burak Kumantila, a young Kazakh engineer, has been working for the Chinese renewable energy company Universal Energy.
"When I joined Universal Energy, I started learning everything about electricity and the solar parks, wind parks. The first two years I used to work at the project site, which is here, there is a solar park. And after two years, I transferred to the office. Now I work as a business development manager," he said.
It takes Kumantila a little over an hour to drive from his home in Kazakhstan's largest city, Almaty, to work at the Kapchagay Solar Park, one of the largest single photovoltaic power plants in the region.
"It's very sunny here in Almaty in the region, and there are some very sunny, very hot regions in south Kazakhstan which are perfectly suitable for building a solar park," the young engineer said.
The Kapchagay Solar Park is one of the 10 renewable energy projects in Kazakhstan supported by Universal Energy, totaling 630 megawatts in capacity.
Kumantila stressed that Chinese companies not only invest financially, but also provide valuable technical support, helping the locals master new technologies in the field.
"China is definitely helping Kazakhstan to reach its target of net zero by investing not only financially but also technologically, because there are some new technology which we as local people might not know or might have heard of, but do not know how to implement. And then the Chinese companies just come here, they invest in projects, in people, they train everybody. So now we have some good specialists in this renewable energy area," he said.
Young engineers gain experience as Kazakhstan teams up with China on green energy
