The Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) has issued guarantees to Meridiam for equity investments into Asonha Energie SA, which will build and operate the 35MW Kinguélé Aval Hydropower Plant in Gabon.

Gabon has among the highest potential for hydropower in Africa. The government of Gabon (GoG) is therefore taking steps to transition into sustainable energy sources and create a single national integrated grid using hydropower. GoG intends to rely on independent power producers (IPP) to exploit its largely untapped hydro potential.

The 20-year guarantees totalling €25.3 million (approximately $28.7m) provide protection from breach of contract, expropriation, transfer restriction and currency inconvertibility, and war and civil disturbance.

Gabon has a comparatively high national electrification rate of 93% with about 374,000 customers connected to its five regional interconnected networks.

However, the country’s power generation capacity is under strain due to the growing population, increased urbanisation and industrial development. Historically, electricity has been generated mostly by hydropower plants.

Given the rapid growth of demand and lack of planning in recent years, reliance on expensive and polluting thermal generation using liquid fuels has increased and now accounts for more than half of national electricity production.

Besides increasing the cost of service, this growth in thermal capacity has increased the sector’s carbon footprint. Gabon’s electricity demand is expected to grow as much as 3.7% annually.

The Plant is the first IPP undertaken in Gabon at a cost of €179m ($196.6m).

It will bring low-cost clean power generation capacity to support electricity demand in Gabon’s capital, Libreville, and restore the financial viability of Gabon’s power sector.

Additionally, the Plant will supply around 32,000 new customers, increase GDP by $40m, and create an estimated 880 indirect and induced jobs.

Carrier Delta Air Lines Inc (DAL.N) will help planemaker Airbus (AIR.PA) in its effort to develop a hydrogen-powered passenger airplane, the companies said.

Delta is the first U.S.-based airline the European planemaker is partnering with for hydrogen aircraft. Atlanta-based Delta said the partnership does not entail any financial investment on its part.

Airbus has plans to produce a small “ZEROe” passenger aircraft powered by hydrogen to enter service in 2035, and wants to get feedback from customers while the new aircraft is being developed, Amanda Simpson, vice president for research and technology at Airbus, said in an interview.

“We re in…the pre-product development phase, where we re trying to understand clearly what is the realm of the possible – what is going to work,” Simpson told Reuters.

Last month, Airbus said it would build a demonstrator to test propulsion technology for hydrogen airplanes in co-operation with French-U.S. engine maker CFM International.

Amelia DeLuca, vice president of Sustainability at Delta, said the collaboration would focus on understanding the requirements for the new plane s deployment including the production of green hydrogen in the United States and its accessibility at the country s airports.

The carrier said the partnership would also advocate for a decarbonized future in aviation, including hydrogen pathways, with key stakeholders.

U.S. planemaker Boeing Co (BA.N) has been more skeptical about commercial prospects for hydrogen-powered air transport by 2035, putting greater public focus on sustainable aviation fuels.

Delta is one of the biggest customers of Airbus. As of end-December, it had 368 Airbus planes in its fleet. The company has purchase commitments for another 245 Airbus planes and has options for additional 120 aircraft.

Traveling in China’s scenic Yunnan province is about to get a bit easier — and more thrilling — with the world’s first single-tower, single-span suspension bridge set to open next month.

Stretching 798 meters over a river valley, Lvzhijiang Bridge’s mere length may not sound all that extreme when compared to some of the world’s longest bridges. But the complexity of the project is earning it recognition as an engineering marvel.

The bridge hangs above Lvzhijiang (literally translated as “Green Juice River”) and protrudes from tunnels that emerge from steep mountain faces on each side of the valley.

Built in a mountainous V-shaped valley, it is the world’s first single-tower, single-span suspension bridge; it’s only held up by one tower and is supported at both ends by cables. There are no additional columns, giving it a dramatic, gravity-defying look.

The bridge’s single span — the distance between two supports — is 780 meters. In addition, officials say it has the world’s steepest tunnel anchorage, which is angled at 54 degrees.

Due to the area’s rugged landscape, all of the main supporting elements — the 156-meter-high tower, the bridge approach slab on one end of the structure and the tunnel anchorage on the other end of the structure — are built upon steep slopes.

The project manager told Chinese state media that “the height difference between the bridge deck and the assembly yard is 320 meters high, or about 100 stories high … the complexity of this project is rarely seen in China.”

The bridge links neighboring Yuxi City and Yunnan’s Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture and will dramatically shorten the journey time.

The maximum speed limit on the bridge is 100 kilometers per hour.

With construction commencing in 2019, the project took about three years to complete. It’s expected to open to traffic by late April 2022.

A Belgian businessman sanctioned by the U.S. over allegations of illicit gold trade in Congo said Friday the action undermines efforts to improve transparency in a region seeing rising official exports of the mineral.

The U.S. announced sanctions late Thursday targeting Alain Goetz and African Gold Refinery, a Uganda-based company that has been in business since 2014.

The company is among several linked to Goetz that are “involved in the illicit movement of gold valued at hundreds of millions of dollars per year” from Congo, the Treasury Department said in a statement.

The illicit movement of gold threatens Congo’s peace and stability, it said, charging that more than 90% of Congo’s gold is smuggled to neighboring countries such as Uganda and Rwanda where it’s “then often refined and exported to international markets, particularly the UAE.”

Congo’s expansive eastern provinces have long been wracked by sporadic armed conflict, and monitoring groups assert that control of the minerals trade fuels the violence.

The new sanctions include the blocking of U.S.-based assets owned by Goetz and his companies.

Drought-stricken California is facing another year of parched conditions and pleas for conservation as the winter comes to a close with little of the hoped-for rain and snow.

A wet December that dumped snow in the mountains fueled optimism as 2022 began, but the state may end this month with the distinction of the driest January through March in at least a century.

State water officials are preparing to tell major urban and agricultural water agencies Friday that they will get even less water from state supplies than the small amount they were promised to start the year, and major reservoirs remain well below their normal levels.

Meanwhile, Californians water use went up in January despite calls for conservation. Gov. Gavin Newsom has stopped short of mandatory water-use cutbacks, but his Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot said recently that local or regional governments might issue their own orders.

“The wiser we are with the use of water now means the more sustainable we are if the drought persists,” he said last week at a Sacramento news conference urging people to save water. He added, “water is a precious resource, particularly in the American West, and we have to move away from clearly wasteful practices.”

California is in its second acute drought in less than a decade, and scientists say the U.S. West is broadly experiencing the worst megadrought in 1,200 years, made more intense by climate change.

But the dry conditions that began in 2020 are demanding more conservation, as reservoirs such as Lake Oroville and Shasta Lake remain below historical levels and less water from melting snow is expected to trickle down the mountains this spring.

Current predictions estimate the state will see about 57% of the historical median runoff this April through July, said Alan Haynes, hydrologist in charge for the California Nevada River Forecast Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“If we hadn’t had what we had in December. we’d probably be in much more serious trouble,” he said.

A persistent lack of water can have a range of negative consequences, including farmers fallowing fields and endangered salmon and other fish dying.