Renewable

(SeeNews) - Oct 24, 2013 - Reykjavik Geothermal and the Ethiopian government signed an official deal under which the Iceland-based will build the 1,000-MW Corbetti geothermal complex, the Ethiopian Radio and Television Agency (ERTA) said Wednesday.

The project involves an investment of USD 4 billion (EUR 2.9bn) over at least eight years. The agreement with the government marked the establishment of Corbetti Geothermal Power as an Ethiopia-based entity. According to an earlier statement by Reykjavik Geothermal chairman Michael Philipp, the project is led by US private investors and is part of US President Barack Obama’s USD-7-billion initiative to double electricity access in Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria and Tanzania.

The first 500-MW phase of the plan is to be finalised in five years, while the remaining 500 MW are to come on stream in eight years, the report says. Reykjavik Geothermal will be selling the output to Ethiopian Electric Power Corp (EEPCo) for a term of over 25 years under a power purchase agreement.

Initially, the plan was for a 300-MW geothermal plant, but it expanded. ERTA cited Debretsiyon Gebremichael, Minister of Communication and Information Technology of Ethiopia and EEPCO chairman, as saying that the local government is ready to support more investments of that kind.

(USD 1 = EUR 0.725)