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The OPIC Blog
September Board Meeting: Priorities renewed and newerSeptember 26, 2012At its September meeting, OPIC’s Board of Directors kept the agency’s focus trained on priority sectors – renewable resources; food security and safe drinking water; and small and medium size businesses (SMEs) – and added another: the growing middle class in emerging markets, which stand to transform developing countries in the coming years. Be it Africa, where 100 million households 
In India, living off the grid has its benefitsAugust 02, 2012As large swaths of India were in the dark this week after a massive power outage hit half the population, some of the country’s more remote communities had light. Those communities, once restricted by their locations far from central electric utility grids, have in more recent years benefited from innovation that has enabled them to generate their own power. Shortly before this week’s devastating power outage, The Addressing the lack of long-term lending for renewable energyApril 10, 2012“Despite significant growth over the past few years, India’s renewable energy sector remains underserved, primarily due to the inability of financial institutions to offer long-term lending,” OPIC recently explained in a blog post for the U.S. Commerce Department. The post discusses OPIC’s recent approval of $250 million in financing to help India’s Infrastructure Development Finance Corp. (IDFC) expand lending for Photos: In India, telecom sector taps solar powerOctober 12, 2011OPIC’s board recently approved $150 million in financing to expand the use of solar energy to power telecommunications towers in India. Applied Solar Technologies plans to use the financing to supplement the diesel-powered generators on the cellular towers with solar hybrid energy systems. Attached are some photos of the project. Project snapshot: Renewable energy in India’s rice beltSeptember 08, 2011Site India Sector Renewable energy Challenge More than one billion residents of India have no electricity and many of them live in remote villages off the electricity grid. Solution $750,000 in debt financing for Husk Power Systems Inc. to cover the installation throughout rural India of 36 “mini energy generation facilities” that burn discarded rice husks to generate electricity. Impact Project Profile: OPIC loans fund India’s first large scale solar power plantsAugust 02, 2011Site India Sector Solar power Challenge Advance India’s goal of generating more power from renewable sources and bring power to rural areas located outside the existing electricity grid. Solution An initial loan of $6.2 million to Azure Power to construct a 2-megawatt solar power plant in Punjab. Additional loans for the construction of two other plants have followed. Impact More “Before electricity we did not know which century we were living in.”July 15, 2011This video from India’s Husk Power Systems Inc. — an OPIC loan recipient — outlines how rice husks are being used to generate electricity and transform lives in many of India’s most remote communities. OPIC project in India wins green energy awardJune 17, 2011In 2009, OPIC approved a loan to India’s Husk Power Systems Inc. to build a series of energy generation facilities that convert rice husk waste into electricity to serve rural villages. This week, Husk won the Ashden Award for Sustainable Energy, a British award aimed at addressing climate change and alleviating poverty. Full story. |
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