UTILITIES
The Syrian civil war was one of the defining conflicts of the 21st century. With the UN reporting more than 580,000 casualties and 13 million displaced people, the human cost of the fighting was vast.
The damage to Syria’ s built environment was also devastating. Historic cities like Damascus and Aleppo were razed, with homes and infrastructure left beyond repair.
While the toppling of the Assad regime in November 2024 marked the end of the war for many experts, Syrian society is yet to be rebuilt, with skirmishes and small insurgencies often disrupting reconstruction efforts.
One of the most important parts of these efforts is the restoration of the country’ s energy sector, without which the lives of Syrians can scarcely return to normal.
With much of the national grid destroyed by the years of fighting, Syria is currently generating less than 20 % of its pre-war electricity. To put a figure on the damage, the Syrian government told the UN in 2022 that its energy sector had suffered losses of US $ 107bn, long before the road to recovery was within sight.
It was against this backdrop that President Ahmad al-Sharaa travelled to Berlin on 30 March and, alongside a ministerial delegation, visited the headquarters of Siemens Energy – a company that has a long history in Syria’ s power sector.
The visit culminated in the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the Syrian Ministry of Energy and Siemens Energy, as well as a gasfired power generation capacity reservation agreement between UCC Holding and Siemens.
What the agreements actually mean The deals are more substantive than the typical diplomatic formalities that tend to accompany such state visits.
Speaking at a forum held alongside the visit, Syria’ s Energy Minister Mohammad al-Bashir said the government has signed agreements to generate 5GW
68 May 2026