Financing will support the largest rooftop PV system in Latin America

A $5 million loan from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) will enable Corporación Industrial del Norte, SA (Corinsa), to install photovoltaic solar panels on the roofs of its bottling plant buildings in San Pedro Sula, Honduras.  The panels will produce 3 MW of zero-emission electricity as part of a project with an overall cost of $10 million.

“This example has tremendous scale-up potential in the private sector, as companies seek to become more competitive and at the same time reduce their carbon footprint,” said Kelle Bevine, Chief of the Strategy Management Unit in the IDB’s Structured and Corporate Finance Department.

The project will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by replacing grid electricity with emission-free solar power. In addition, energy efficiency improvements will reduce demand on the electrical grid. The project is expected to generate approximately 53,000 tons of CO2 reductions.  Upon project completion, the photovoltaic panels will cover 34,000 square meters of roof and supply about 20 percent of the plant’s electricity needs, making it the largest rooftop industrial scale photovoltaic system in Latin America.

“The investment in solar PV will not only generate considerable savings and a good return on investment, it will also help the company manage future energy cost fluctuations and reduce our carbon footprint.” said Roberto Larach, General Director of the Corinsa Group.

As demand for energy in the region is expected to increase by over 50 percent in the next decade, it’s critical that individual companies make investments in saving energy and produce their own clean energy on-site in order to reduce costs, increase reliability, and decrease fossil fuel consumption.

The IDB loan to the Corinsa Group is part of a $50 million Energy Efficiency Finance Facility (EEFF). The EEFF was established by the IDB with support from the Nordic Development Fund (NDF) and is structured to both identify opportunities for companies to invest in clean energy projects, and finance their implementation. NDF helps reduce barriers to finance through an innovative guarantee program to support IDB financial offerings.

“Our partnership with the IDB helps us leverage our resources effectively and uncover highly developmental business opportunities that really make a difference in Latin America and the Caribbean,” said Leena Klossner, Deputy Director of NDF.

The IDB plans to provide similar loans for innovative energy efficiency projects throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.