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Six “beautiful” hydropower plants funded in Norway

The Nordic Investment Bank (NIB) has financed six hydropower plants in Nordland County, northern Norway.

The Øvre Forsland power plant, which opened in August last year (Bjørn Leirvik)

The 15-year loan will allow Norwegian power company Helgeland Kraft to create plants that are "beautiful and adapted to the surrounding nature".

The plants will increase the security of supply and increase the generation capacity by 166GWh a year.

The $56m investment will fund the construction of five plants in the municipality of Brønnøy. Total annual production will be 133GWh.

Henrik Normann, the chief exectutive of the NIB, said: "Hydropower is one of the most mature technologies among renewable energies and has among the best conversion efficiencies of all known energy sources."

Helgeland Kraft has 12 hydroelectric power plants with an annual production of 1,100GWh.

The utility is owned by 14 municipalities in Nordland, where it distributes 6,000GWh of electricity to around 80,000 inhabitants through its 8,000km distribution network.

The NIB is an international financial institution owned by eight member countries: Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and Sweden.

The bank finances private and public projects in and outside the member countries.

Construction started in 2014, and the plants are due to start operations between April 2016 and September 2017.

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Comments

  1. Comment! It is really lamentable that the massive potential of such hydroelectric power plants has not been
    nearly as fully adopted both in my Country South Africa and in so many African Countries with great potential for such a non-polluting source of power!

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