The World Bank’s Clean Technology Fund (CTF) announce today that they are investing $750 million into Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) in North Africa. The investment is slated for five countries in the Middle East and North Africa: Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and Tunisia. The goal is to deploy 11 “gigawatt-scale” power plants over a 3 -5 year time frame that would “provide the critical mass of investments necessary to attract significant private sector interest, benefit from economies of scale to reduce cost, result in learning in diverse operating conditions, and manage risk.”
That last part is “heavy.”
Like all World Bank projects, you need to did for the agendas driving change. In this case it is right in the press release ….
The transformational objective of this investment plan is served by accelerating cost reduction for a technology that could become least-cost globally, and then be replicated in other countries with high GHG emissions.
I’m not sure what this means. Go north to Spain and you have several seasoned CSP companies which already know how to be “least-cost globally.” These CSP companies are here in California setting up shop. Granted, CSP CAPEX and OPEX can be better, but that will come with time. What would be surprising is if CFP contracts are awarded to some of the new start-ups which are not from US, Europe, or China.
Still, this $750 million should contribute to the projected growth. As seen below, Emerging Energy Research did not project a huge growth for North Africa. Perhaps this investment would help change this projection.
