$250m funding pledge signed

Adelaide Advertiser
Wednesday 15/4/2009 Page: 52

Carnegie Corporation has signed an agreement worth up to $250 million with international banking group Investec to fund the development of its Australian wave power project. The agreement is non binding, until formal agreements have been negotiated. It involves Investec securing the first right of refusal to fund the development of Carnegie Corporation's CETO wave energy technology.

The technology aims to generate electricity by using an array of submerged buoys, tethered to seabed pump units. Wave motion moves the buoys, driving the pumps and delivering pressurised water to the shore to generate electricity. Carnegie Corporation was last month licensed by the South Australian Government to do a feasibility on setting up the technology in SA's South - East, near Port MacDonnell.

The company has said it would spend up to $2 million on the assessment and is also conducting trials at Albany and Garden Island in Western Australia. The company aims to complete a small-scale (5-6MW) plant by 2011, with a view to linking up a $400 million, 50MW plant to the national grid by 2013. Carnegie Corporation last month was also awarded a $12.5 million grant from the WA Government's Low Energy Emissions Development Fund.

"The commercial demonstration project is the subject of a federal government funding application and, as such, details of the project are commercial-inconfidence," the company said yesterday. "The agreement is also conditional upon the successful outcome of this funding application. "Carnegie Corporation continues to carry out feasibility studies at its portfolio of potential project sites across southern Australia, and the company expects to be able to announce the site of the commercial demonstration project in mid-2009."