China's Silk Road Fund will acquire a 24.01 percent equity interest in the 700-megawatt (MW) Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) project in the United Arab Emirates, according to a statement from ACWA Power, a leading developer, owner, and operator of power generation and water desalination plants.
"The DEWA CSP Project will be jointly invested and developed by DEWA, Silk Road Fund, and ACWA Power," Sunday’s statement read.
The project, which was awarded to an ACWA Power-led consortium in 2017, is the fourth phase of the Mohamed bin Rashid Solar Park, the largest single-site concentrated solar power plant in the world, according to the statement.
"The project uses a state-of-the-art combination of a central tower and parabolic trough technologies to collect energy from the sun, store it in molten salt and produce steam as required to generate electricity during the day and throughout the night," it said.
The project is expected to deliver electricity at a levelized tariff of $7.30 per kilowatt-hour 24 hours a day, "a cost level that competes with fossil fuel-generated electricity without subsidy for reliable and dispatchable solar energy around the clock".
According to the statement, the plant will support the Dubai Clean Energy Strategy 2050 to increase the share of clean energy in Dubai to 25 percent by 2030, and is expected to provide an annual saving of 2.4 million tons of carbon dioxide.
ACWA Power CEO Paddy Padmanathan called the project "the largest single renewable energy project underway in the world today".
“The introduction of a new investor into the DEWA CSP is absolutely in line with ACWA Power's established strategy of sharing investments with value adding partners who will in turn bolster our projects," he said.
"This co-investment also is in keeping with our investment strategy of efficiently deploying our own capital to retain a meaningful level of equity interest in each project that is sufficient to permit us to be the long-term investor with de facto control over the investment and for us to remain focused on reliably delivering electricity and desalinated water at low cost," he added.
The Silk Road Fund invests in a broad spectrum of sectors under the framework of the Belt and Road initiative including infrastructure, energy resources, industrial capacity cooperation and financial cooperation.
By Hale Turkes
Anadolu Agency
energy@aa.com.tr