IVORY COAST: technical support from USTDA for the Boundiali biomass plant
The project to build a biomass power plant in Boundiali receives support from the United States Trade and Development Agency (USTDA). It provides a subsidy for technical assistance for this 25 MW power plant.
A new biomass power plant will be built in Boundiali in the north of Ivory Coast. The project benefits from the support of the United States Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) which signed a subsidy agreement with its promoter Ecostar Energy Côte d'Ivoire, the subsidiary of the American company Ecostar Energy.
Ecostar entrusted the technical assistance of its project to its compatriot Delphos International. “The partnership between USTDA and Ecostar will support the diversification of electricity production in Côte d'Ivoire thanks to a locally abundant renewable resource,” explains Enoh T. Ebong, director of USTDA.
These are cotton stalks which will be incinerated to produce electricity, with a capacity of 25 MW. This resource is abundant in the north of Côte d'Ivoire. Since the end of the 1950s, cotton has been one of the most cultivated agricultural products in savannah areas. In this West African country, cotton cultivation occupies at least 300,000 hectares of land and supports more than 200,000 farmers.
Today, Côte d'Ivoire occupies third place among cotton-producing countries on the African continent (behind Benin and Burkina Faso) with more than 490,000 tonnes of cotton harvested in 2020 according to the Atlasocio platform. The energy recovery of agricultural waste from this sector has made it possible to diversify the electricity mix of Côte d'Ivoire, which depends 40% on gas for the production of its electricity.
