(Bloomberg) — Central America’s largest wind farm capable
of generating five percent of Panama’s power demand will receive
a $300 million loan from the World Bank’s corporate funding arm.
The loan will be used to finance phases II and III of
InterEnergy Holdings’ Penonome wind power plant, 150 kilometers
(93 miles) from Panama City, the Washington-based multilateral
lender’s International Finance Corporation, said in statement
today.
Panama is one of the fastest growing economies in Latin
America, though infrastructure investments, particularly to
increase power generation, have lagged, the IFC said.
“The project is aligned with IFC’s strategy to support
initiatives that help Central American countries transition to a
cleaner and more efficient energy matrix,” Gabriel Goldschmidt,
the IFC’s head of Infrastructure in Latin America and the
Caribbean, said in the statement.
Phases II and III of the project, with an installed
capacity of 215 megawatts, were acquired in April by closely
held InterEnergy, which owns energy generation assets in Latin
America and the Caribbean. The power plant will displace about
400,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year, the equivalent of taking
84,000 cars off the road.
To contact the reporter on this story:
Vanessa Dezem in Sao Paulo at
vdezem@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Reed Landberg at
landberg@bloomberg.net
Carlos Caminada, Jim Efstathiou Jr.