Masdar, Sener in $1.2B solar thermal venture

Abu Dhabi's Masdar Initiative and Spain's Sener Grupo de Ingeniería are teaming up on plans to build and operate concentrating solar power plants across the world's sunbelt regions.

The new venture, called Torresol Energy, will be 60 percent owned by Sener, an engineering group, with 40 percent held by Masdar, the Abu Dhabi government's umbrella group for all of its renewable projects.

The groups said one of Torresol Energy's primary objectives is to widen the adoption of concentrating solar power, or CSP, a solar thermal technology.

The venture's first order of business is to start work on three solar power plants in Spain with combined value of  $1.2 billion.

"Masdar is committed to developing and delivering future energy solutions. And the Torresol CSP technology promises to be the technology that will revolutionize the way we draw energy from the sun," said Ahmed Al Jaber, CEO of Masdar.

In January, Masdar announced a $15 billion commitment to renewable energy in the emirate, plans for the first zero-carbon city, and a global cleantech research network (see Abu Dhabi, the next cleantech hub?).

Masdar and Sener said one of the new Spanish solar plants will be a CSP central tower receiver system, which they said would be the first-ever commercial deployment of the technology.

The two groups did not announce when the Spanish plants would start operation, but said they would "set the standards for anticipated CSP projects across the sunbelt countries by 2012."

Independently of Torresol, Masdar is developing CSP plants in Abu Dhabi, with its flagship plant "Shams 1" expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2010.