The six projects, involving an investment of $450m, are located in the Benban Solar Park in Aswan in Egypt.
The consortium, comprising EBRD, Green Climate Fund (GCF), Dutch development bank FMO, Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) and Islamic Corporation for the Development of the Private Sector (ICD), will provide a non-recourse project finance of $335m, accounting for 75% of the capital.
The three sponsors of the projects, Scatec Solar, Norfund and Africa50, the Infrastructure Fund for Africa, will provide 25% of the equity.
The $48m will be the highest that the GCF has disbursed to a single recipient and the first under a co-operation agreement it signed with EBRD in April 2017.
Scatec Solar, the turn-key EPC provider for the projects, will provide operation and maintenance and asset management services to the power plants.
After completion, the Benban park, with a total capacity of 1.8GW, is expected to be the largest solar installation in the world.
The consortium is investing in joint projects in Egypt’s renewable energy sector for the first time.
The 400MW solar plants will produce 870GWh of electricity annually and avoid 350,000 tons of CO2 emissions per year, helping Egypt in increasing the share of renewables in the country’s power generation to 37% by 2035.
In April, Scatec Solar and partners signed 25-year Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) with the Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company and construction is scheduled to begin in 2018.
