Kibo pens clean energy PPA in South Africa

The UK and Africa-focused Kibo Energy has entered into a 10-year take-or-pay conditional power purchase agreement (PPA) to generate baseload electricity from a 2.7 MW plastic-to-syngas power plant in South Africa, the company said on February 14.

The plant will be constructed, commissioned and operated for an industrial business park developer in Gauteng. The project is the first project under Sustineri Energy, a joint venture in which Kibo holds 65% and the balance of 35% is held by Industrial Green Energy Solutions.

The project will provide the customer with cleaner electricity, by making use of a high temperature pyrolysis process, where selected non-recyclable plastics will undergo thermal degradation to produce high quality syngas, which will in turn feed gas engines to generate both electricity and heat energy.

Additionally, there is potential to sell the heat energy generated as a byproduct from the gas engines directly to customers inside the industrial park, Kibo said. The construction phase is scheduled to begin during Q4 2022 with project commissioning 11 to 14 months thereafter.

The capital expenditure requirement for the project is expected to be about 180mn rand ($11.8mn) with financial close expected during Q3 2022.