Construction of $570 million solar power plant in Iran halted "due to sanctions"
The British company Kirkus, which signed a contract with Iran last September to build a 600-megawatt solar power plant worth 500 million euros ($570 million), says it has suspended the project due to US sanctions.
Reuters reported on Tuesday, August 13, citing Kirkus' CEO, that the company had decided to halt the project after US sanctions returned.
He said, without providing details, that financing for the project has been problematic and that the company is closely following developments related to Iran.
The company was supposed to raise capital for the project from private investment companies and a British investment fund and deliver the project three years after signing the contract.
The company's CEO did not say whether it suffered losses due to the withdrawal from the project.
After the lifting of nuclear sanctions in 2015, Iran announced that it plans to produce 5,000 megawatts of renewable energy (wind and solar power plants) over the next five years.
Citing reports from the Iranian Ministry of Energy, Reuters wrote that as of June this year, 250 foreign companies had signed contracts with Iran to produce 4,000 megawatts of electricity from renewable energy power plants, of which 602 megawatts have been installed.
The report does not specify which Ministry of Energy statistics it is citing. According to the latest weekly statistics from the specialized parent company for the management of the generation, transmission and distribution of Iranian electricity (Tavanir), a subsidiary of the Ministry of Energy, the total capacity of electricity generation from renewable sources in Iran as of July 5 of this year was about 364 megawatts.
However, the report predicts that 960 megawatts of renewable power plants will enter production by the end of the year.
Iran last year predicted that it would produce 690 megawatts of new solar and wind power plants, but in reality only 58 megawatts of renewable power plants were commissioned. No solar or wind power plants have been commissioned this year.
Private company Kirkus has so far launched 28 renewable energy projects with a total capacity of 235 megawatts. The Iran contract was the British company's largest solar power project.
Another major foreign company that signed a contract with Iran to build a 2,000-megawatt renewable power plant is Norway's Saga Energy. The company's operations manager told Reuters that the issue of financing the project has become very complicated with the return of US sanctions, but the company wants to move forward with the project, although its construction could be delayed.
Construction of the 2.5 billion euro project was scheduled to begin at the end of this year.
Source: Radio Farda
