Eight financiers back Acwa's 2 GW of solar in Turkey

Eight international financial institutions signed support letters to finance two Acwa Power solar plants in Turkey totaling 2 GW, with an estimated investment of 1,600 million euros (about 1,770 million dollars). The signing took place on November 11, 2026, on the sidelines of COP31, which is being held in Antalya until November 20, according to pv magazine.

The plants, 1 GW each, are located in Sivas, in the center of the country, and in Taşeli, in the province of Karaman, in the south. They are the first phase of a 5 GW solar and wind package agreed between Turkey and Saudi Arabia in February 2026, according to Turkey's Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources. The signatories are the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), DEG, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB), Société Générale and Standard Chartered. For Latin American markets the interest lies in the structure: multilateral banks and commercial banks aligned before debt close, a scheme that addresses the counterparty risk that makes solar PPAs more expensive in emerging economies.

Acwa Power, headquartered in Riyadh, expects both plants to reach commercial operation in 2029 and to supply close to 1.3 million households, with an estimated reduction of 1.65 million tons of CO2 per year. Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar noted that the remaining capacity up to 5 GW may include wind, solar and storage, and that adding the high-voltage transmission lines brings the full package to around 5,000 to 6,000 million dollars, Anadolu Agency reported. The support letters are not equivalent to financial close: the loan amounts and terms were not disclosed. Turkey is targeting 175 GW of installed solar and wind by 2040, against a goal of 120 GW in 2035, and closed the first half of 2026 with 26.9 GW of cumulative solar after adding 2.1 GW in the period.

The next milestone is converting those letters into debt contracts and announcing financial close for Sivas and Taşeli. In parallel, Turkey's YEKA auction, which the minister described as running at a pace of 2 GW per year, will signal whether the country can sustain the pace the Saudi package needs to reach 5 GW.

This article was drafted with the assistance of artificial intelligence from verified sources and reviewed by a human editor before publication.