The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and its partners, have agreed to provide a loan of $35m (£28.8m) for the development of 37MW private-to-private solar project in Jordan.
EBRD’s partners who provided the loan include the Jordan Kuwait Bank PSC (JKB), the Arab Jordan Investment Bank (Qatar) (AJUBQ) and the Climate Investment Funds’ Clean Technology Fund.
The international financial institution stated: “The investment will be the largest private-to-private solar project in Jordan yet, benefiting from new regulations that allow private consumers to establish their own energy facilities under a process known as “wheeling” that transports electricity from within the grid to facilities outside the grid’s boundaries.”
EBRD loan to support 37MW solar project in Jordan
The 37MW solar project comprises of three solar plants, which were developed by Kawar Investment, a Jordanian company, while it was engineered, procured and constructed by Kawar Energy.
The project is located in the King Hussein Bin Talal Development Area in Mafraq governorate and the Amman governorate. The operation and maintenance arm of Kawar Energy will handle the operations and maintenance of all three solar parks for the next 20 years.
The solar project is expected to generate electricity of about 70GWh annually, while offsetting 41,500 tonnes of CO2 emissions annually.
Power generated from the solar project will be supplied to telecom operator Orange Jordan, to cover part of its energy demand with such clean energy generated from solar plant.
With EBRD’s support, the Jordan’s renewable energy sector has increased its capacity from around 20MW to more than 1GW between 2012 and 2019, with an estimated 1.2GW under construction or development.
Recently, EBRD has offered a loan of €149m (£136.7m) for state-owned operator Ukrenergo to upgrade its electricity transmission network in Ukraine.
The 15-year sovereign-guaranteed loan provided by the EBRD will help in acquiring up to 26 new transformers and to carry out automation and upgrade of 12 high-voltage substations across key locations in the Ukrainian transmission network.
