SEFA Finances Studies for Biomass Plants in Ghana and Sierra Leone

NewAfrica Impact, a London-based portfolio manager, has just secured a $1 million grant from the Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa (SEFA), an African Development Bank (AfDB) facility that supports the deployment of renewable energy in Africa to build two biomass power plants in Ghana and Sierra Leone. NewAfrica Impact will process wood waste for self-consumption. The repayable grant from SEFA is intended to support the projects’ technical feasibility studies and regulatory structuring. NewAfrica Impact plans to produce 5 MW of electricity for each power plant using agroforestry waste as fuel. The heat produced by the incinerators (10 MW) will be recovered to heat the wood processing machines.

Managing partner of NewAfrica Impact, Mads Asprem, said, “The SEFA process has already improved the quality of our development work, including environmental impact assessments, and with the approval of the project, we will create a new and efficient solution to combine energy production for productive purposes and household consumption through mini-grids”.

The two biomass plants will have 10 MW and 22 MW thermal capacity combined. This energy is intended to power wood processing plants. But in Sierra Leone, where only 26% of the population has access to electricity, according to the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS), NewAfrica Impact will provide some of the electricity produced by its biomass to the people living near the wood processing plant. The construction of the two biomass plants will create 125 temporary and 60 permanent jobs. According to NewAfrica Impact, the plants will also offset the emissions of 45,000 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent per year.