Projects

Togolese Government inaugurated one of the largest solar projects in West Africa and the first renewable energy facility in the country in July 2021. The now fully operational 50-megawatt (MW) Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed solar power plant, financed under the IRENA-ADFD Project Facility, will supply reliable, clean electricity to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses in the country. The new plant has the capacity to provide electricity to nearly 160,000 homes and small businesses, significantly reducing the country’s dependence on firewood, charcoal and fuel imports for energy consumption. The project will also advance the Togolese national clean energy strategy to increase the share of renewables in electrification to 50 per cent by 2025 and 100 per cent by 2030.

In 2019, Cuba’s Ministry of Energy and Mines together with the ADFD and IRENA inaugurated a new 10 megawatt (MW) solar PV project in the country. The grid-connected project was financed by ADFD under the IRENA/ADFD Project Facility and will deliver enough electricity to power the equivalent of nearly 7,000 Cuban homes. The project contributes to the Cuban government’s national objectives to reduce the use of fossil fuels for electricity generation and increase the share of power from renewables to 24 per cent by 2030. The project mitigates around 12,700 tCO2e emissions annually.

Since July 2019, the Vandhoo Regional Waste Management Centre started power generation with the intent of managing waste from the Atolls of Noonu, Raa, Baa and Lhaviyani. The facility benefitted from ADFD’s concessional loan assistance facilitated through IRENA. The facility services 20 islands (including 11 resorts) with improved waste collection and management. The procurement of the contractor for the Addu facility was completed in 2019 and the project is expected to be fully completed in 2021.

The construction of the 6 MW solar PV park at Newton town near Freetown started in 2018 and completed in 2020. The plant has the capacity to generate about 8.76 GWh of electricity annually, improving grid stability and boosting supply during peak demand while also reducing dependence of fossil-based electricity supply for Freetown’s 190,000 inhabitants. The project also created employment opportunities and the subsequent acquisition of technical skills through training on installation, operations and maintenance of solar PV power plants in the region.