€57 million project financing for the Topolog wind farm in Romania

LUKERG Renew, through its subsidiary Land Power, has signed a project finance loan agreement with EBRD as Lender and UniCredit as Participant, to finance the 84 MW Topolog-Dorobantu wind farm located in the Romanian region of Tulcea.

The loan, for the total amount of €57 million, will have a maturity of 14 years. The EBRD financing is structured under the Bank’s A/B loan scheme, with €38 million on the EBRD’s own account and the rest for the account of UniCredit. 

On 9 January 2014, LUKERG Renew, a joint venture between Italy's ERG Renew and Russia's LUKOIL - Ecoenergo, finalised the construction and commissioning of the project. The wind farm was connected to the national grid last November and turbine testing activities are currently underway. The new facility has an installed capacity of 82 MW, to which another 2 MW will be added during the coming months, as soon as construction of the last turbine authorised in December 2013 has been completed.

On 12 February 2014 Vestas,a Danish manufacturer, announced that it won the service contract to provide operations and maintenance services on the project.

The 84 MW wind farm comprises 42 Vestas V90 2 MW wind turbines. It is located in the municipalities of Doroban?u, Topolog and Casimcea in the Tulcea region of south-eastern Romania. The Topolog Dorobantu project is one of the largest projects in Romania. The facility will generate more than 200 GWh of electricity per year, corresponding to around 85 kt of avoided CO2 emissions.

Since the start of its operations in the country, the EBRD has invested approximately €6.7 billion across 360 projects. The bank has further mobilised over €14 billion for these ventures from other sources of financing.