Riyadh – Mubasher: Abdul Latif Jameel Co has revealed plans to start investing in Latin America’s renewable energy sector in the coming period.
At the international level, the Saudi firm is establishing approximately 5-gigawatt (GW) projects, of which 30% are in Latin America, according to Bloomberg.
“Latin America is an important market, where costs of renewables are declining and governments are giving support,” Abdul Latif Jameel energy unit’s CEO Roberto de Diego Arozamena said.
Last week, Abdul Latif Jameel Energy secured a loan to start its first project in Mexico through establishing a 342-megawatt (MW) solar plant.
In Chile, the firm was awarded a project, which will provide 224,000 houses with 100 MWs of wind and 100 MWs of solar energy.
For Brazil, the Saudi firm is uncertain about its investments there owing to Brazil’s jittery currency and the lack of dollar-denominated contracts, Arozamena said, noting that his company continues to view Argentina as “risky”.
In 2017, a statistic by Bloomberg New Energy Finance showed that the value of investments in Latin America’s renewable energy surged 65% to $17.2 billion, exceeding the international average by 3%.
In 2015, Abdul Latif Jameel Co took over the Spanish solar company Fotowatio Renewable Ventures, whose energy projects included around 3.8 GW gigawatts of projects in emerging solar markets in Latin America, Africa, Australia, and the MENA region.
“We have a strong pipeline in Latin America and will focus on solar and wind,” Arozamena concluded.
