The Russia-Ukraine conflict and the United States-Israel war on Iran have exposed how fragile energy systems built on dependency and external markets truly are.

This cycle of fuel crises and price shocks should be encouraging countries dependent on energy imports to address energy deficits and mitigate the impoverishment they cause among citizens. And yet few are undertaking the bold actions needed to improve energy independence.

Tunisia is certainly not one of them. The country’s energy deficit currently stands at roughly $3.8bn – nearly 51 percent of its total trade deficit – and has grown every year since 2000, driven by rising domestic consumption and a structural failure to build genuine energy sovereignty. The Tunisian authorities, however, are pursuing the wrong policies to address the problem.

They have hedged their bets on the privatisation of the energy sector, as reflected in the recent approval of five renewable energy concessions. The projects allow foreign multinationals to extract profits from renewable energy production and dump costs on the Tunisian people. This approach will not solve Tunisia’s energy crisis; instead, it will deepen its energy dependency while transferring public wealth into private hands.

Five bad energy concessions

On January 29, five new concession contracts for electricity production from renewables were submitted to the Tunisian parliament for approval.

The five solar plants – Khobna and Mezzouna in Sidi Bouzid in central Tunisia, El Ksour and Sagdoud in Gafsa in the west, and Menzel Habib in Gabes on the coast – would have a combined capacity of roughly 598 megawatts, with a total investment estimated at $560m. They would be granted to foreign multinationals.

In the following months, concern about the proposed projects grew. On April 21, the Electricity and Gas Federation, a trade union organisation, held an urgent news conference laying out the concrete mechanics of what the parliament was being asked to approve. The concessions, they argued, would reduce STEG, Tunisia’s national public utility, to a mere grid operator,........

© Al Jazeera