German Bank KfW Will Lend Colombia $203.8m For Green Energy Transition

Germany will lend Columbia about USD 203.8m in two stages to help the latter achieve green energy transition and become energy-independent. According to a report, Germany’s state owned development bank KfW has released a statement that it will facilitate the loan transfer so that Columbia can rollout renewable energy projects. KfW executive Christiane Laibach has been quoted by the news report as saying that Germany supports Colombia in making its policy more environmentally friendly and creating the necessary conditions to steer private and public investments to green projects.

The Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) will lend the loan in the second phase of the programme, KfW said. A broad roadmap will be laid out for Colombia’s energy transition which will have specific targets for every sector of renewable energy. The target will be to augment the proportion of non-conventional renewables, mainly solar and wind power, to 12% of the country’s energy mix from the present 0.2%. Given the geographical endowment and trerrains, the Latin American nation is already dominated by hydropower contributing 66% to the electricity mix.

Another goal of the programme will be to mainstream the centralised power generation. At present, the national power grid is far too centralised to connect the remote regions keeping out the local population whose contribution to climate-friendly electricity mix is crucial. The decentralised power generation by companies with a green generation capacity of below 0.1 MW should be eased.

It may be recalled here that KfW provided to Colombia a financial package of EUR 150 million at the end of 2021 as part of the first phase of the programme. Duke Energy Florida broke ground on the Columbia solar plant in 2019, with full operation in March 2020. The solar power plant is owned, operated and maintained by Duke Energy Florida and developed by Core Solar, which had constructed other solar projects in Florida.