The Beijing-headquartered Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) has approved a 100-million-U.S.-dollar loan to a private energy company in Uzbekistan to boost the energy supply and security, the bank announced on Monday.
The loan, AIIB's first nonsovereign-backed financing, was issued to ACWA Power Sirdarya LLC to support the construction of the 1,500-megawatt Sirdarya Combined Cycle Gas Turbines (CCGT) project.
The power project is located in the central Sirdarya region and aims to increase the availability of high-efficiency gas power generation capacity in the country.
The project is being developed by Saudi Arabia's ACWA Power, a developer, investor and operator of power, desalinated water, and green hydrogen plants in the Middle East, Africa, Central Asia and Southeast Asia.
"Uzbekistan's electricity system faces major supply gaps, which is estimated to be 9.4 percent of the total electricity demand in 2019, and lacks the needed reserve capacity to balance the upcoming large share of intermittent renewable energy such as solar and wind," AIIB said on its website.
According to the lender, the construction of new, high-efficiency gas power stations, which would replace older and less efficient assets, is an important modernization step that complements the early spread of renewable energy.
Editor: Galia
