More than a decade of ambitious sector reform has led to a period of stability in the Armenian energy sector. The sector faces challenges more typical of a developed economy than an emerging one: policymakers' concerns have shifted from avoiding total system collapse to optimizing the energy...

In the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse, Armenia, like other former Soviet republics, began to struggle with the implications of its newfound independence. In the electricity sector, this meant learning how to manage and sustain a fragment of a system that had never been designed to function...

Armenia's power sector has suffered many setbacks: in the late 1980s an earthquake that took its major nuclear plant off-line, and in the early 1990s the collapse of the Soviet Union, economic blockade, and repeated sabotage of a new gas pipeline-all of which severely disrupted fuel supply. The...

In the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse, Armenia, like other former Soviet republics, began to struggle with the implications of its newfound independence. In the electricity sector, this meant learning how to manage and sustain a fragment of a system that had never been designed to function...

The level of performance of an electric utility is determined by the soundness of its financial situation, the efficiency of its technology, and the quality of service it provides customers. Its financial underpinning is a balance of costs and revenue (from customer payments, government, and...

The COVID-19 pandemic has spurred unprecedented economic disruption globally. The full scope of the virus's impact on human health and economic activity remains to be seen, but two things are clear: (1) the most fragile economies, and most vulnerable segments of the world's population, are least...

The last fifteen years have seen Armenia emerge from Soviet rule and a severe economic and energy crisis, both complicated by its newfound political surroundings. The last ten years have seen significant reform and progress in the power sector which, when compared to the progress made by its...

Before the onset of the global financial crisis in late 2008, countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia (ECA) experienced strong economic growth. Demand for electricity increased steadily with gross domestic product (GDP). GDP grew, on average, 6.5 percent between 2000 and 2007, and...