Vestas announced a new program to bring wind-powered electricity to rural areas in developing nations.
Vestas announced a new program to bring wind-powered electricity to rural areas in developing nations.
The project — a partnership of Vestas, Masdar, the Abu Dhabi renewable energy company and Frontier Investment Management, a Danish private equity outfit — aims to start supplying electricity next year to more than 200,000 people spread across roughly 13 communities in Kenya. The company plans to replicate the project elsewhere in Africa and in Asia and Latin America, using refurbished wind turbines in tandem with diesel generators to cut power costs by at least 30 percent, Vestas executives said.
Mr. Albaek said he wanted to raise $150 million to $200 million to meet the program’s goals of serving at least one million people in 100 communities in the next three years. But the payoff is unclear. Wind development is still limited in remote regions of emerging economies, which often do not have established infrastructure and carry high transportation and construction costs. Mr. Albaek declined to say how much return investors could expect.
Read more at The New York Times.
