The German Development Bank (KfW) has agreed to provide Tunisian power state-owned utility Société tunisienne de l’électricité et du gaz (STEG) with €12.5 million financing for a 10 MW solar project that the company is developing in Tozeur, southern Tunisia.
In a statement to pv magazine, the KfW said the funds consist of a €12 million low-interest rate loan for the plant construction and a further €0.5 million for additional services related to the project.
The loan was awarded in partnership with the EU in the frame of the Neighbourhood Investment Facility (NIF), which provides EU partners with access to financing for heavy infrastructure in social sectors, transport, energy and the environment. Furthermore, NIF granted an additional financing of €1.5 million to Steg for the project.
Overall, the construction of the plant will require an investment of €16 million.
The facility will be built by Italian solar developer Ternienergia. The company won the €12.5 million EPC contract for the project in March.
Tunisia’s Ministry of Economy issued the Request for Proposal for the construction of the plant in 2014. The project is part of Tunisia’s solar program Plan Solaire Tunisien (PST).
In early April, the German Federal Enterprise for International Cooperation (GIZ) provided the Tunisian government with €7 million in funding to support the implementation phase of the PST.
The funds are being spent to finance the logistical and technical supervision on the development of the renewable energy program for the period 2017-2020. Tunisia’s Minister of Energy Hela Cheikhrouhou said that the funds will also be utilized to contract German and Tunisia’s experts, as well as engineering consulting firms based in Germany.
Under its renewable energy strategy, Tunisia is aiming for 4.7 GW of renewable energy capacity by 2030. According to Climate Action, the Energy General Direction of the Tunisian Ministry of Energy and Mines has recently announced it will invest $1 billion to install 1 GW of renewable energy generation capacity in 2017.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.