Genneia to invest up to US$500 million in wind and solar energy

With eleven years of existence, Genneia currently has 20% of the Argentine renewable energy installed capacity market and plans to continue expanding with investments of up to US$ 500 million in the next three years.

"We continue to be the market leader and we have the conviction and the objective of remaining so", said Gustavo Castagnino, the company's Director of Corporate Affairs and Sustainability, in statements to Télam.

Genneia has seven wind farms in operation (Rawson, Trelew, Madryn and Chubut Norte in Chubut; Pomona in Río Negro and Necochea and Villalonga in Buenos Aires) and two solar farms (Ulllum and Sierras de Ullum, both in San Juan) and is the main renewable energy generator in Argentina.

"We are building two new farms: a wind farm in Tandil (La Elbita) and a solar farm in San Juan (Tocota III)", informed Castagnino, who remarked the constraints posed by the lack of electricity transmission capacity.

In this respect, he warned that "beyond the fact that there is a very good wind in the area of Tandil where we are building the park, it also had to do with the fact that there was free transport capacity".

"Why don't we continue building wind farms in Patagonia? Naturally, because of the lack of transport capacity," he pointed out.

Castagnino assured that "Genneia is a company that should grow exponentially, for example in Chubut, and be able to expand the four wind farms we have in the province, as well as in Río Negro, in the south of the province of Buenos Aires, in Santa Cruz, in Neuquén, but we are growing where we can".

"We invested almost US$ 1.5 billion in six years and we are going to invest between US$ 400 million and US$ 500 million more in the next two to three years," he described.

Since its creation, the company has installed 236 wind turbines and 433,320 solar panels, with more than 3.4 million MWh (megawatt hours) of energy generated annually and 6.1 million tons of CO2 emissions reduced.

Of the nine wind and solar farms in operation, the one with the largest capacity is Madryn, with 222 MW, followed by Pomona (113 MW) and Rawson (109 MW).