COVER STORY
DANIEL CALDERON
32 Vol. 19/18, May 2018
previously had leading roles at
General Electric and Masdar,
has a lot to smile about. During
his five-year stint as Masdar’s
head of origination and invest-
ment management, he helped
acquire, develop and oper-
ate projects in the renewable
energy sector, investing $7bn
in wind and solar projects.
“There was an opportunity
to do the first ever wind farm in
Jordan, and I saw how renew-
able energy could significantly
lower the cost of power gener-
ation. We were producing
electricity at just 12 cents perkWh. It opened my eyes to the
opportunities that lay ahead
in this field and the sustain-
able impact we could make,”
he says.
In 2014, Calderon teamed
up with the late and legendary
co-founder of Petrofac Inter-
national Maroun Semaan to
create Alcazar Energy, with
the primary goal of being
an independent developer
and power producer for
renewable energy genera-
tion across the META region.
But with a key difference:
rather than enter the top end2014
The year Daniel Calderon and
Maroun Semaan founded
Alcazar EnergyANIEL CALDERON LIKES
to talk numbers.
And you certainly
can’t blame the
co-founder and CEO of
Alcazar Energy, the DIFC-
based developer and power
producer taking the renew-
able energy industry by storm.
Right now, the numbers are
literally mind blowing.
Currently, a fifth of the
world’s electricity is produced
by renewable energy. New
solar power accounts for half
of all new capacity, followed by
wind power, which accounts
for a third – making this the first
time in history that added solar
capacity managed to outstrip
all other electricity producing
technology. Despite the best
efforts of French President
Emmanuel Macron, Donald
Trump might be saying a long
goodbye to the Paris Agree-
ment, but there is nothing
even he can do about the fact
that the cost of producing clean
energy is plummeting by the
day, making it an increasingly
cost-effective and viable solu-
tion for many countries.
“Back in 2006, if you wanted
to build mega solar plant in
somewhere like Germany,
it would cost you $10m. For
those plants to make a profit
they would have to sell elec-
tricity at 50 euro cents per Kilo
Watt hour (kWh). Today, in
Egypt we have plants selling
at eight cents per kWh.
“In 2006, a solar panel had
an efficiency of just seven
percent – meaning only seven
percent of it was converted by
sun rays. Today that number is
in the twenties, while the cost
of plants has dropped below
$1m/MW. For example, you
could be building something at
less than 10 percent of the cost
in 2016, and it is three times
more efficient just a decade
later,” says Calderon.
Little wonder Calderon, a
German-born Colombian who
D
“In 2006, a solar
panel had an
effi ciency of just
seven percent.
Today that number
is in the twenties”u Renewable energy sources now deliver a fi fth of the world’s electricity