Qatar’s Al Kharsaah Solar Power Plant will reduce 26 million tonnes of CO2

Qatar’s ambitious Al Kharsaah Large-Scale Solar PV Power Plant, which is to be built at an estimated cost of QR1.7bn, will be reducing 26 million tonnes of CO2 during the project’s life time.

The upcoming project is being established in collaboration with Qatari, French and Japanese companies. Once the first phase is operational by early 2021, Qatar General Electricity and Water Corporation (Kahramaa) will buy electricity from Siraj1, which is owned by Siraj Energy (60 percent) and a consortium of Japan’s Marubeni Corporation and France’s Total Solar International (40 percent).

Siraj Energy is a subsidiary of Qatar Petroleum (QP) and Qatar Electricity and Water Company (QEWC), the main producer of utilities in Qatar.

The project follows a Build, Own, Operate, and Transfer (BOOT) model and has a term of 25 years, after which the ownership will be transferred to Kahramaa. The huge solar power plant, to be constructed at Al Kharsaah area west of Doha on a 10 square kilometer land plot, is the first of its kind in Qatar.

The plant will have a total capacity of 800MW which equals about 10 percent of Qatar’s current peak electricity demand. The project is part of Qatar’s efforts to conserve energy and protect the environment in a manner that strikes a balance between the needs of the current generation and that of the future generations as stipulated by Qatar National Vision 2030.

A number of agreements were signed yesterday.

The agreements were signed by Essa bin Hilal Al Kuwari, the President of Qatar General Electricity and Water Corporation (Kahramaa); Fahad bin Hamad Al Mohannadi, the General Manager and Managing Director of QEWC and member of the Board of Directors of Siraj Energy; Masumi Kakinoki, the President and CEO of Marubeni Corporation; and Patrick Pouyanné, the Chairman and CEO of Total.

H E Saad Sherida Al Kaabi, the Minister of State for Energy Affairs and the President and CEO of QP, said: “This project comes in implementation of Qatar’s policy to diversify the production of energy and to increase reliance on and the efficiency of renewable energy, which is a basic cornerstone for a sustainable future for the generations to come.”

Minister Al Kaabi added: “This project also comes as part of the energy sector’s contributions towards Qatar’s commitment to host the FIFA 2022 World Cup. It will generate about 8 times the size of the solar energy Qatar had pledged to build, helping the organization of a carbon neutral event.”

Masumi Kakinoki, the President and CEO of Marubeni Corporation said: “First, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Kahramaa for selecting Marubeni to lead Al Kharsaah Solar PV Power Plant Project. As part of the promotion of sustainable development, and the fight against climate change, Marubeni aims to help realize a decarbonized society. As such, we are targeting an approximately 20 percent increase in the ratio of power generated by renewable energy sources in our net power supply by 2023. We will work hard to make this project successful, thus contributing to the further development of Qatar, and the achievement of the QNV 2030.”

Pouyanné (of Total) said: “We are extremely proud to develop Al Kharsaah Solar PV Power Plant alongside Marubeni and Siraj Energy. Total is committed to better energy that is safer, more affordable and cleaner and has the ambition to expand its footprint in renewables to 25 GW by 2025.”

During the first phase of the project, 350MW will be connected to the grid by the first quarter of 2021 while the commercial commissioning of the total capacity is expected to start in the first quarter of 2022.