The World Bank approved a $146 million grant on 25 June 2025 for the Syria Electricity Emergency Project, which will rehabilitate damaged high-voltage transmission lines — including two critical 400 kV interconnector lines — along with damaged high-voltage transformer substations, and supply spare parts and maintenance equipment. The project is implemented by the Public Establishment for Transmission and Distribution of Electricity.
The Bank’s own description of the starting position is blunt: years of conflict have crippled Syria’s national grid, limiting electricity supply to two to four hours daily, and leaving large segments of the population and economy in a persistent state of energy insecurity.
Two to four hours is not a degraded service. It is a country running on generators, with everything that implies for hospitals, water treatment, refrigeration and any business that cannot afford its own diesel.
Why interconnectors come first
That the grant names two 400 kV interconnectors specifically is worth pausing on.
An interconnector carries power between networks rather than within one. For a country whose own generation has collapsed, it is the fastest available route to supply: rather than rebuild power stations — which takes years — you repair the lines that let a neighbour’s surplus reach your customers.
Jordan has pledged to supply 250 to 300 megawatts and to send technical teams to assess the grid’s readiness. Arrangements with Qatar and Türkiye are expected to raise generation available to Syria from around 1,600 MW to 3,200 MW, against installed domestic capacity reported at roughly 1,500 MW in 2025.
Repairing an interconnector is not simply restringing wire. The line needs its earthwire and OPGW intact, because protection and control data has to travel with the power; the substations at each end need working circuit breakers, instrument transformers and protection relays; and both networks must agree on how faults will be cleared before either will energise the connection.
The scale of what remains
Against the $146 million grant sits an estimated $40 billion required to rebuild and modernise the sector as a whole. The grant is emergency triage, not reconstruction.
Work has been proceeding regardless. The transmission and distribution establishment announced a series of strategic projects completed in December 2025 across Homs, Hama and Deir Ezzor, aimed at reinforcing the national grid. Solar plants totalling 40 megawatts were commissioned in the Hassia Industrial Zone and connected to the grid.
Pressly has documented one 400 kV corridor in the south of the country: the Rural Damascus–Daraa transmission line, 107 kilometres across 321 tower positions, with two 400 kV circuits, more than 2,500 kilometres of phase conductor and enhanced earthing at 84 tower positions.
What a functioning grid would mean
It is easy to read grid investment as a technical matter. In Syria it is not.
The difference between four hours of power and twenty is the difference between a clinic that can refrigerate vaccines and one that cannot; between a workshop that can operate and one that cannot; between a household that can pump water and one that queues for it. Transmission is the least visible part of that chain and among the most decisive.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| World Bank grant | $146m, approved 25 June 2025 |
| Implementing body | Public Establishment for Transmission and Distribution of Electricity |
| Scope | HV transmission lines, two 400 kV interconnectors, transformer substations |
| Daily supply before the project | 2–4 hours |
| Installed capacity (2025) | ~1,500 MW |
| Jordanian supply pledged | 250–300 MW |
| Estimated sector reconstruction cost | ~$40bn |
Grant terms, project scope and supply figures are as stated in the World Bank’s announcement of 25 June 2025. Capacity and regional supply figures are drawn from public reporting and have not been independently verified by Pressly.
