Miniplast Limited, a plastic manufacturer and recycling company in Ghana, has signed up for solar power supply from a 704 kW rooftop solar system by Stella Futura Ltd., that will install and operate the plant. Miniplast will source more than 1,100 MWh of clean power annually from this project under the 30-year power sales agreement (PSA) executed between the manufacturer, Sweden’s Stella and a local project company whose majority owner is impact investment fund Empower Invest.

To be set up on factory rooftops of Miniplast in Spintex Industrial Area of Accra city, the 704 kW system is planned to be grid connected by July 2020. It will help the manufacturer reduce its consumption of diesel to power its factories while bringing down its electricity costs.

“We’re excited to install one of the largest industrial and commercial solar PV systems in Ghana,” said Nadim Ghanem-Pares, Deputy Managing Director of Miniplast Limited. “Furthermore, this will be a flagship project to promote the use of renewable energy within the Spintex Industrial enclave of Accra.” Empower Invest’s Empower New Energy (EmNEW) is funded by Norway’s development fund for emerging markets Norfund, and European Union’s first electrification financing initiative, Electrify, among others.

Specific terms of the contract were not disclosed, but the project can be termed as one among the first corporate solar PPAs on the African continent. The rooftop solar project is scalable, said Miniplast.

In 2019, corporate clean energy contracts worth 19.5 GW were signed in 23 nations, according to a BloomberNEF report that claims the EMEA market accounted for 2.6 GW of the total (see 19.5 GW Corporate Clean Energy Contracts in 2019).