COVER STORY
DANIEL CALDERON
34 Vol. 19/18, May 2018
72%
Of new capacity in electricity will
be met by wind and solar by 2040“What is different
about our company
is we want to build a
plant and operate it
for the long term”u Wind and solar will be at the core of delivering power to 357,000 households in the META regionu The eight plants Alcazar owns will save governments $1.6bn in fossil fuelsof the market dominated by
government-owned entities
that focus on large, indus-
trial-scale energy generation
projects, Calderon decided to
home in purely on the mid-
market segment.
Public-private partnerships
This has been the pattern in
more mature energy markets,
with private investors occu-
pying a big role in develop-
ing medium-scale renewable
energy facilities – more than
190 independent players
already exist in this market in
Europe and the US.
This, of course, is where
the serious opportunity is.
According to Bloomberg,
72 percent of new capacity
worldwide will be wind or
solar by 2040. In the META
region, 680GW of wind or
solar energy is required,
equating to a market worth a
staggering $400bn.
That would help explain
Alcazar’s impressive array
of shareholders that include
Blue Stone Management,
Jordan-based Dash Ventures
International, IFC (a member
of the World Bank Group),
AMC and Mubadala Infra-
structure Partners. He says
they have been a central part
of the company’s success and
the reason they have grown
so quickly.
“There is a gap for us here,
whereby we are not compet-
ing with the big players. We
have the right project finance,
equity and construction
teams that can deliver these
projects for us, and that’s
exactly what we have been
doing,” he says.
He can say that again. The
company already has one
solar and two wind projects
in Jordan, a wind project in
Turkey and four solar projects
in Egypt. Calderon has specifi-
cally been targeting countries
with the right legal framework
in place – with governments
in those three countries seen
as largely supportive to early
entrants in the market.
“These countries really
benefit from their renewable
energy policies and these are
the markets that have grown.
Having the right legislation is
one of the key points when we
look at coming to a new coun-try, we look to see if there is a
renewable energy framework
because we want to invest
long term,” he says.
“The region has many
developers that come to
develop a wind plant then
they sell it to make a profit.
What is different about our
company is that we want to
build a plant and operate itfor the long term. So the legal
framework is important. I
think many regional govern-
ments have actually done an
excellent job and for us, being
in DIFC allows us to have all
the right compliance. And in
Egypt, Turkey and Jordan we
can now sell electricity at a
lower cost than other forms
of power generation,” he says.“In Egypt, Turkey
and Jordan we can
sell electricity at
a lower cost than
other forms of
power generation”