Norwegian Firm Signs $2.9bn Solar Deal with Iran


TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Norway’s Saga Energy has signed a 2.5 billion-euro ($2.94 billion) deal to build solar power plants in Iran, the company said.

Saga inked the preliminary agreement with Iran’s state-owned Amin Energy Developers on Tuesday.

The deal would see the construction over a four- to five-year period of 2 gigawatts of power generation capacity, Saga Energy spokesman Rune Haaland said, Reuters reported on Wednesday.

The company will rely on banks, pension funds and Norwegian state export guarantees to fund the plan, and aims to recoup its investment through a 25-year deal on electricity prices, he added.

While Saga and Lithuania’s SoliTek will produce the solar panels, much of the remaining equipment will come from Taiwan’s Delta Electronics Inc.

“They will provide all the installations of electronics such as inverters, for example,” Haaland said of Delta.

Eventually, the plan is to build a plant in Iran to churn out solar panels, he added.

It came after US President Donald Trump announced that he would decertify the 2015 nuclear agreement between Tehran and world powers.

“We are a little bit worried about what Trump is doing, we are very much in favor of the atomic deal, but we will, of course, continue with our plans whatever Trump does, no doubt about that, nothing can change that,” Saga’s Haaland said.