Finland Government has promised to provide €114 million loan facility over four years for clean energy projects in developing countries to be repaid with interest over the next 25 years.
Finland’s Foreign Trade and Development Minister Anne-Mari Virolainen, said that the facility would be provided to fund climate projects, particularly in low-income countries
A statement by the ministry on the proposed facility, indicated that the sum would be used to implement the projects to harness wave energy or research power storage options or even developing new earnings models, for example.
Already, Virolainen has signed the technical cooperation agreement with the World Bank’s financing arm, the International Finance Corporation or IFC, at the ongoing IMF/World Bank Group annual meetings in Bali, Indonesia.
The ministry stated that the new cooperation pact was an extension of the climate fund that Finland established in collaboration with the IFC last year, adding that at the time, Finland pledged €114 million over the next four years to support private-sector investments in climate and energy projects in developing countries.
In addition, it also disclosed the fund’s first three-million-euro investment was committed to a major project fronted by the Moroccan energy company, Gaia Energy, which aims to build 22 power production facilities running mainly on wind power in nine different African countries, comprising Ivory Coast, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco.
The ministry stated further that the nominal capacity of the plants was projected at three gigawatts and would increase current wind power capacity in Africa by about 50 percent.
According to initial estimates, electricity production by the facilities will be equivalent to the output by energy firm Fortum’s two nuclear reactors in Loviisa, Southeast Finland.
