Tunisia approves – Tunisia has pushed five renewable energy concession contracts through parliament, despite warnings from the Electricity and Gas Federation and the Tunisian Economic Observatory that the deals would lock the country into deeper dependency. Critics say the conce
By the time the parliamentary vote came, the argument had already been fought in public—outside the doors of power and in a tense, urgent news conference that laid out how the concessions would work in practice.
On January 29, five new concession contracts for electricity production from renewables were submitted to the Tunisian parliament for approval. The proposed projects—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 together generate roughly 598 megawatts. The total investment was estimated at $560m, and the concessions were to be granted to foreign multinationals.
As the months passed, resistance hardened. On April 21. the Electricity and Gas Federation. a trade union organisation. held an urgent news conference to challenge the specifics of what parliament was being asked to approve. The federation argued that the concessions would reduce STEG. Tunisia’s national public utility. to a mere grid operator. while electricity production would be handed to foreign companies. Infrastructure costs, the federation said, would be paid by the public, while profits would leave with the corporations.
That framing put the deals at the centre of a wider dispute: not whether Tunisia needs renewables, but what kind of energy independence the country is actually buying.
The Tunisian Economic Observatory added another layer. It reported that the five concessions would come with extensive tax exemptions and stabilisation clauses that could undermine Tunisia’s fiscal sovereignty. It also said there would be no meaningful technology transfer. weak local integration. and limited employment opportunities—factors that. in the observatory’s view. raised serious concerns about the developmental value of the projects.
Carbon credits became a flashpoint too. The observatory reported that under these contracts, carbon credits generated through emissions reductions on Tunisian territory could be transferred to the multinationals rather than remaining a public asset.
Opposition had already started before the five concessions reached parliament. Last year, the Electricity and Gas Federation organised a strike denouncing the transfer of carbon credits to private developers. Despite that pushback, the five concessions moved forward and—critics say—entrenched and expanded the same mechanism.
Under the approved contracts. project developers would be able to claim credits generated by reductions on Tunisian territory and use them to access international subsidy programmes. The result. as critics describe it. is that incentives intended to support a national energy transition could be captured by private actors to boost their profits.
Public awareness mattered in the weeks leading to the vote. The federation and independent media mobilised public opinion against the concessions. Workers and activists staged a protest outside parliament. Yet the five concessions were voted through, and the contracts were approved.
The government response was swift. The energy minister and a senior Ministry of Industry official were dismissed to placate public anger and to distance the ruling elite from the controversial projects.
The timing of all this matters because Tunisia’s energy deficit is not a passing problem. The deficit currently stands at roughly $3.8bn—nearly 51 percent of its total trade deficit—and it has grown every year since 2000. driven by rising domestic consumption and what is described as a structural failure to build genuine energy sovereignty.
Tunisia’s authorities have presented the concessions as a way to reduce that deficit, cut dependence on Algerian gas—which supplies about 60 percent of the country’s natural gas needs—and meet a target of reaching 35 percent renewables in the energy mix by 2030.
At first sight, those goals can sound like straightforward progress. But the case against the concessions rests on how the deficit is defined and what counts as a solution.
The most glaring omission, critics say, is the nature of Tunisia’s energy deficit itself. About 73 percent of Tunisia’s energy comes from petroleum products—gasoline and diesel—consumed overwhelmingly by a transport sector built around private transportation. Addressing it. according to the same critique. requires choices that go beyond adding renewable generation: investment in public transport. restrictions on car imports. and progressive taxation on high-consumption vehicles.
It also demands regional thinking. Reducing petroleum imports. critics argue. requires strengthening domestic refining capacity. specifically investing in and upgrading the Tunisian Company of Petroleum Industries (STIR). That would involve revisiting forms of regional cooperation that were once within reach.
In 2012, Tunisia and Libya discussed a joint refinery project at the coastal town of Skhira. The project was valued at $2bn and, proponents argue, could have advanced energy sovereignty for both countries. But the plan was suspended because the conflict in Libya made a steady crude supply impossible to guarantee. Eventually, the refinery proposal was quietly abandoned. Critics say it was not only because of logistics—it was because sovereign regional cooperation threatened interests tied to European powers that profit from exporting refined petroleum products to the region.
The broader critique links Tunisia’s place in global trade to its energy choices. Libya exports crude oil but imports refined products; Tunisia. with far fewer resources. is described as caught in the same extractivist logic—exporting primary commodities (raw materials and agricultural produce) and a limited number of semi-industrial or manufactured products while staying dependent on imports for high-value industrial and technology products. A shared refinery, critics argue, would have broken that cycle in the energy sector.
The solar concessions, they say, repeat the same pattern. They do not address the structural issues behind the energy deficit. They do not build domestic industrial capacity. They do not transfer technology. What they do. critics argue. is open “a new frontier for international capital accumulation” framed—again. critics say—through the language of transition. sustainability. and development.
In Tunisia. the fight now sits in the gap between urgency and control: a country dealing with a widening energy deficit is moving forward with deals that critics believe shift costs to the public while profits and key assets flow outward. Tunisia’s energy crisis is real; the dispute is over whether these renewable contracts expand sovereignty or deepen dependency.
The argument for a different direction is laid out in the same terms: public control over energy production and distribution. genuine technology transfer. investment in domestic industrial capacity. a shift in the consumption paradigm through energy efficiency and public transport. and regional cooperation aimed at building sovereignty rather than locking the country further into import dependence.
The view. as presented. is that the neoliberal corporate-led model has repeatedly run into limits during financial crises. pandemics. and geopolitical shocks reshaping the global economy—and that each new crisis is being used as a pretext for doubling down on the same failing logic. The line drawn is blunt: transition is necessary. but it must be on Tunisia’s own terms—with public control. democratic oversight. and inclusive development defined by the needs of the many. not the profit margins of the few.
Tunisia energy deficit renewable energy concessions STEG electricity and gas federation carbon credits Tunisian Economic Observatory Algerian gas STIR solar plants Khobna Mezzouna El Ksour Sagdoud Menzel Habib energy sovereignty transport energy use