France’s Engie makes another big GCC solar play: France’s utility company Engie plans to bid on the 1.5 GW Al Ajban solar project in Abu Dhabi, Engie’s country manager for GCC and Pakistan, Frederic Claux, told The National on the sidelines of the World Green Economy Summit in Dubai last week. Emirates Water and Electricity Company (EWEC) put the project up for bidding last May.

Engie also wants to bid on a renewables project in Saudi Arabia, Claux told the newspaper without naming the project.

If recent transactions are anything to go by, MENA is a big market for Engie: Engie owns 20% of the Mirfa International Power and Water Plant (Mirfa IWPP) in the UAE, which secured AED 4 bn (USD 1 bn) in refinancing last month. In Saudi Arabia, Engie is part of a consortium building the solar-powered Jubail 3B Independent Water Project (IWP) for Saudi Water Partnership Company (SWPC), which kicked off construction in May. Last year, Engie was part of a consortium that will develop, construct and operate a 500 MW wind farm in Ras Ghareb in Egypt.

ALSO IN GCC SOLAR NEWS-

SMART POLICY- Bahrain is planning on building a 100 MW solar farm on the site of an old landfill. Bahrain’s Electricity and Water Authority (EWA) issued a tender to cleanup and ready the landfill site at Askar in the kingdom’s Southern Governorate for the power plant, EWA published on its tender board last week. The tender includes designing and constructing a landfill gas extraction and treatment system, as well as designing a drainage system

The deadline for sending in proposals is November 14.

SYRIA IS GETTING A 100 MW SOLAR PLANT, BUT THAT WON’T BE THE NORM-

Syria launched the first phase of a 100 MW solar energy plant in Adra, the country’s prime minister’s office announced last week. The plant, which will be built under a public private partnership (PPP), currently has 10 MW installed capacity connected to the grid.

Al Asad weighs in on the great debate: Renewable energy is not intended to replace traditional energy sources in Syria, but rather to supplement traditional energy sources, which currently fall short of providing coverage in the country, which has suffered from a 12-year-long civil war, Syrian president Bashar Al Asad told The Syrian News Channel and Al Ekhbariya on the inauguration of the first phase (watch, runtime: 7:56).

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