KarmSolar And ElBadr Look To Raise $22 Milllion to Light Up an Entire Mall in Cairo with Solar Power
This would be considered as KarmSolar's first steps in the commercial real estate world, lighting up Sheikh Zayed's Arkan Plaza by 2021.
Egypt's leading solar power solutions provider, KarmSolar, and El Badr for Investment and Commercial Spaces are raising $22 million investment to turn their Arkan Plaza deal into a reality. Both companies are thriving to light up the 6th of October City shopping centre entirely by solar by 2021.
On May 10th, KarmSolar signed the deal with the Plaza's owner company, El Badr, which includes a commitment by the solar power company to build solar stations of a total of 20 megawatts by 2021. With that plan and the investment, a 100 percent conversion to green energy should be sustained at Arkan Plaza. "Through our partnership with a market leader like KarmSolar we are aiming to make our operations sustainable and more efficient," says Tamer Badr El Din, a board member at El Badr. "It is our aim to become completely dependent on clean renewable energy by 2021 and we are confident KarmSolar will get us there."
The deal comprises the implementation of energy distribution as well as generation. "Our partnership with a real estate developer like El Badr aims to enable them to streamline their energy utility operations," says KarmSolar's CEO Ahmed Zahran. "We are confident that other developers will follow this visionary move, as they recognise that investing in clean energy is no longer a choice, but a necessity."
KarmSolar's subsidiary arm that invests in private solar Power Purchase Agreements, KarmPower, will be carrying out this project with a total pipeline of committed projects of 65 megawatts to be executed before 2020. "This is KarmPower’s first time to take on a comprehensive energy solution for a commercial mall," says Ibrahim Metawie, KarmPower’s general manager. "We are expecting this to become one of our main business lines as more developers look towards energy efficiency."
Along with Randa Fahmy, Ahmed Zahran co-founded KarmSolar in 2011 after forking from their personal savings to fill in a gap in the market that no one was paying attention to. "It is our mission to empower our clients;" says Zahran. "Our partnership with a real estate leader like El Badr aims to enable them to streamline their energy utility operations. We are confident that other developers will follow this visionary move, as they recognise that investing in clean energy is no longer a choice, but a necessity."
Main photo: Randa Fahmy, co-founder of Karmsolar.
Photography: @MO4Network's #MO4Productions.
