ContourGlobal has closed the $91.5 million debt financing for the $142 million KivuWatt lakebed methane-to-power project in Rwanda. The financing is the largest single private investment in Rwanda’s history, and also its first project financing. It marks a powerful endorsement by development financing institutions of the country’s recovery since its 1994 genocide.
More particularly, the financing highlights the successful efforts of Contour to get lenders comfortable with a very unusual type of generating technology. The effort is unlikely to produce any follow-ups, because the setting for KivuWatt, and the lake chemistry that allows the project to operate, is unique.
KivuWatt will be located on Lake Kivu, which divides Rwanda from the Democratic Republic of Congo, is one of the African Great Lakes, and is also one of three so-called Exploding Lakes, along with Cameroon’s Lake Nyos and Lake Monoun. These lakes feature high concentrations of carbon dioxide...
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