The Karavasta Photovoltaic Park implementation, a project designed to be the biggest photovoltaic power plant of its kind in the Balkans, kicked off with the French renewable company Voltalia teams already on the ground to aggregate all the necessary data on the preparatory phase for the park’s construction site.

Prime Minister Edi Rama today visited the site made available for construction of the photovoltaic power plant, where he was briefed on the project’s progress by the representatives of France’s Voltalia, the renewable company that won the international tender launched by the Albanian government. “we are here at the area where the 140 megawatt Karavasta Photovoltaic Park will be built, the largest of its kind in the Balkans. It is a process that was launched a year ago with an international tender, which has been praised not only in Albania, but also by all international partners for being a model process, not only in terms of transparency, but also for the price we have negotiated and agreed upon during the auction. Leading French company Voltalia, one of the biggest renewable companies in Europe, has offered a price of €24.89 per MWh, a record price. As to the solar radiance, the Karavasta area is seen as an area with highest solar radiance for generation of 3.2 to 4.8 kV hour per each square meter,” the Minister of Infrastructure and Energy Belinda Balluku said, adding all required studies on the project’s impact on the environment have been conducted by maintaining the European standards on environment protection.

The representative of the French company, who thanked PM Rama in Albanian for his visit to the site, noted that the project’s current preparatory phase involves technical studies in terms of environment and parameters that need to be reviewed and submitted to obtain the due construction permit. In the meantime, the Master Plan on tourism development in Divjaka has completed, where significant investment projects are envisaged on this part of the coastline in the coming years, an area with a tremendous untapped economic, social and ecological potential.

Prime Minister Edi Rama handed over the study’s final product to the Divjaka Mayor Fredi Kokoneshi. The study was launched by the Albanian Development Fund in collaboration with a professional and innovative Austrian studio on entire National Park and the development areas outside the Park’s border as part of the ambitious plan on tourism development in the area. Commenting on the project, the government head said that “the goal was to address the sensitivity and fragility of the area in order to develop tourism and attract the whole influx of people to the area over the years and welcome them by offering them now completely different conditions, avoiding any project that would harm what is actually the area’s most precious value, namely the nature, its park and the wild species.”