On 27 November, the South Tarawa Renewable Energy Project in Kiribati was approved with funding $14.7 million from ADB’s Asian Development Fund, Strategic Climate Fund, and New Zealand. The project which is ADB’s first foray into the country’s energy sector aims to reduce the dominance of fossil fuel in its energy mix and increase the share of renewables. It will install climate-resilient solar photovoltaic, battery energy storage, and modern control systems. The project also aims to attract more private sector investment in renewables and improve the capacity of the Public Utilities Board. The project team is being led by PAEN’s Cindy Tiangco.
Two interventions of note came through the drawing boards on 1 December with the approval of the Uttar Pradesh Power Distribution Network Rehabilitation Project and the regional technical assistance on Marine Aquaculture, Reefs, Renewable Energy, Ecotourism for Ecosystem Services (MARES).
The Uttar Pradesh Power Distribution Network Rehabilitation Project is a multi-tranche financing facility (MFF) with an amount of $430 million that aims to improve the quality and reliability of the supply of electricity in Uttar Pradesh in India. Through the project, 65,000 kilometers (km) of rural low-voltage distribution lines from bare conductors will be converted to aerial bundle conductors to benefit an estimated 70 million people in 46,000 rural villages. It will also finance the construction of a parallel network of 11-kilovolt feeders with a total length of 17,000 km to separate the distribution of electricity between residential consumers and agricultural consumers. It is expected that the use of solar energy in agriculture will increase with the enhancement of the distribution line, the increase in electricity supply duration to rural residential consumers, and encourage energy and water conservation. The project is being piggybacked by technical assistance that help will improve the gender inclusivity, corporate governance, and financial management capacity of Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Limited (UPPCL). The project team is led by SAEN’s Pradeep Perera.
The MARES technical assistance (TA) project seeks to improve ADB DMC’s capacity in optimizing the value of its marine resources, creating new industries, and regenerating the marine environment. Through the knowledge and capacity-building activities that will be initiated under the TA, awareness of the healthy ocean economy will have been widely disseminated, imbibed, and will facilitate the development of healthy ocean projects. The TA aims to generate 6 healthy ocean projects using MARES solutions by 2023. The project team is led by SDSC-ENE’s Steve Peters.
On 2 December, the additional financing in the amount of $154.4 in grants for the seventh tranche of the Energy Supply Improvement Investment Program in Afghanistan was approved. The project will support the extension of the electricity network to the western provinces of Herat and Farah to ensure a reliable and continuous supply of electricity to the vulnerable communities in these provinces. The project team is led by Takhmina Muhkamedova, CWEN.