[Presentation]
Good morning. Welcome to Scatec's Capital Markets Update. It's a year since we last met, and we're extremely happy now to invite you to another update. We're going to spend the next couple hours together. I believe we have an interesting agenda. Before the break that starts at 10:00 A.M., I'll provide you with an introduction. Terje Pilskog will do solar and wind, and Jarl Kosberg, whom I'm extremely happy to have here, previously SN Power, will present hydropower. After the break, we will dive into some extremely interesting topics, hybrid solutions. We will cover sustainability and ESG, and of course, financials, that Mikkel will cover. Towards the end, we will open up for questions, and we will all be available to answer those if you may have them.
You should, of course, use the opportunity to send them in during the presentation so that we can attend to them a bit later and towards the end. We have established a new target, 15 GW by 2025. We have previously guided on 4.5 GW at the end of this year. That remains 4.5 GW. On top of that, we will have another 1.4 GW that was a part of the portfolio that came with the acquisition of SN Power. Our business model have been proven over the past 10 years. That, of course, includes the development phase of a project, the construction phase, the operations phase, and at all times, we would like to be a majority shareholder in these long cash flows. We have an extremely competent organization. The people that we have are continuously looking for new opportunities.
Of course, they are doing construction and they optimize the plant in the operational phase. The people that we have are very much focused on. That's the development part, the M&A activities, and of course, we have had now a big acquisition as well last year. Funding the growth will be our cash flow, and most of that cash flow will come from power-producing assets. We will continue to reap the benefits of being a developer, construct, operating, and doing the asset management, and that will also be an important part of the cash that will be generated over the next five years. At all times, and included in our business model, is ESG. Move to next slide. This is a slide that has been extracting some information from Bloomberg. The electricity demand will continue to increase.
It's quite good to see that all these car manufacturers, not all of them, but a lot of them are now saying, "No more R&D money into fossil fuel engines." It'll all go EV. Of course, that's just an example of how the industry is aligning towards reducing the CO2 footprint. 75% of the electricity will be from renewables, and out of the 75%, 90% of that will be in the markets that we are focusing on. Naturally, fossil fuel consumption will be reduced, which I think is good, but it's a natural development. At the center of the technologies that will be applied over the next 30, 40 years will be solar, wind, hydro, and storage. Of course, that is the DNA of Scatec going forward as well. The yearly market investment or the investment into the markets will be more than $500 billion.
If you look at Scatec, since we listed in 2014, you can see that our installed capacity in terms of gigawatts have gone from just below 500 MW up to 3,300 MW today. The backlog and pipeline has shown a healthy development. It is now almost 12 GW. Of course, within that lies the growth element. The pipeline is, of course, looking at it, consists of assets in many parts of the world. It's a high-quality pipeline. If you then look at the EBITDA, again, very nice development from NOK 430 million- NOK 2,478 million if you include the numbers from SN Power last year. In terms of cash generation, more than NOK 1 billion, again, including the cash generated from SN Power. We had our last Capital Markets Update a year and a half ago. Since then, we have built the company.
We are now a global leader in renewables. We are a multi-technology company, and we have built the company brick by brick, meaning that the evaluation we do when we do changes, when we move into new markets, goes through a thorough due diligence at all times. The global footprint is now covering almost 35 countries, and that is set to also increase in the years to come. I've said previously that we are an M&A company, but of course, we are not a company that makes acquisitions of the size we did last year with SN Power. I'm very proud of that because, number one, we have included in Scatec people that have been working in the hydropower arena for many, many years. They have a very good pipeline, and they have an asset portfolio that is producing long-term cash flows.
Carrying out this acquisition with all its attributes in a matter of just a few months, it's amazing. We're now extremely happy that SN Power is a part of Scatec. We have grid-connected 446 MW, and we have also been performing extremely well on the ESG arena. We are number one out of 450 utility scale companies. We will have, of course, a separate presentation on this subject that will bring you further into that area. If you look at the shareholder creation since the listing of the company in the fall of 2014, it has been a very nice ride. Off to a sort of a stable start, and then it is taking off as we are connecting more projects, as our pipeline is growing, as our revenue stream and cash flow is growing.
Right now, we are at 21x the market cap that we were at when we listed in 2014. The producing assets right now, including the 300 MW that we have under construction, amounts to 3,300 MW. They are in three technologies, basically, solar, hydropower, and wind. We also, I have to mention that, we have a few battery installations in Africa. That is a good signal, I think about the future market. 500 people are working for us. Of course, with our partnership profile, we have access through them, expertise, capacity, both in terms of competence, but also in terms of geographies around the world. We continue to lead, and we will be broadening our growth strategy moving into the future. We are a global leader. We continue to stay that way.
We will focus on high growth markets, also focus on a broader offering, not only technology, but also in terms of business proposition. It's natural in a very quickly changing environment that you have to adapt your business model. I have to say that this is not a reactive attitude that we have. We have a proactive attitude, looking for opportunities, looking on how to adjust our business model to satisfy our customers, again, to broaden and to increase the revenues that we should gain from installed plants down the road. This is an ecosystem, if you may say, that includes all our technologies. You will here have offshore wind. We are pursuing offshore wind opportunities, several places, some very large projects. Onshore wind, the same thing. With SN Power, of course, hydropower is at the center.
Of course, on top of hydropower reservoirs, it's a natural place to put floating solar. We will learn later on today how well they fit together. Power prices are coming down. Renewables today is the cheapest source of electricity. When you are approaching $0.01 or $0.015, or even $0.005 sometimes, that opens up other opportunities because you can use this very competitive energy source to produce, for example, fresh water from seawater through desalination. The result is that this liter of water will be the cheapest produced liter of water from seawater ever. This is interesting. I may also mention hydrogen, and there are other opportunities. In short, that is called Power-to-X.
This is the ecosystem that Scatec will maneuver in, and we will apply our business model here the same way we have done previously. How do we get to 15 GW? Terje and Jarl will later present you the details of this pipeline and how we'll achieve it. Looking at the overall numbers, right now we are in operation and have under construction 3.3 GW. We are growing by 2.6 GW towards the end of the year to 4.5 GW. The target we set some time back, it remains. On top of that, we will of course add the 1.4 GW of hydropower plants, bringing it to 5.9 GW at the end of the year. From the end of the year until 2025, we will add another 9.1 GW to bring it to 15 GW.
This is on 100% basis, and of course we have a 50%, 60% shareholding on those assets. Now, going back to the 2.6 GW, the gap in between where we are today and the 4.5 GW, these projects will come from Brazil, 500 MW together with Equinor and Hydro in Brazil, plus another 100 MW on another project. Tunisia, that we entered into, I believe a year and a half ago, 360 MW. South Africa, 600 MW. Pakistan, we signed up with that project in Sukkur, approximately a month ago, 150 MW. We have a large project that we are moving very quickly forward in India amounting to 900 MW. Terje will, during the next presentation, add a bit more color on these different opportunities, or rather projects that is going to bring us to 4.5 GW.
Now, I believe that Well, I know that we have a proven business model, and in solar we have been focusing on development. A lot of the value creation is captured during the development phase. This is where you see the opportunity. This is where you see the type of contracts that you can enter into. This is where you see how quickly you can move these projects forward. Development for us will continue to be important for all these technologies. The building part, construction part of the business, we have been good at that. We have an operating model that have been tested at the same time, execution at the same time, on four different continents. I'm telling you, that is not easy, but we have done that. We will continue to guide on our ownership, and that will be in between 50% and 60%.
For us, it's operation control is important also on the development side. Having some kind of control, transaction control is going to be important for us. On the operational side, you may think that when you operate the plant, it's about pulling some handles, watching some screens. Yeah, you do that too. What's even more important is that we have access to first-hand data from these plants. For example, in South Africa, in our control room there in Cape Town, we get millions of signals in every day. These are being analyzed, they're being optimized, and they're being fed back into the plants to get more kilowatt-hours out of our operating plants. Now, our business model that we have developed on the solar will be replicated on the wind side.
It will be replicated on hydro, and of course we will also use it on hybrid systems. We think this is a good way to handle the market going forward. I also have to say that it's very quickly developing. Now, when something develops quickly, you have to be able to match your organization with these opportunities. Otherwise, you will quickly be left behind. I'm so proud to say this, that our team is so experienced, and they have shown adaptability to this quickly changing market. It's also culturally challenging, but in culture also lies opportunities. Right now, we have about 45 nationalities working in Scatec. M&A capabilities, I mentioned before the acquisition of SN Power. We're going to build up the M&A activity and capabilities going forward to support the expansion of the company. Our culture is value-driven, and it's also result-driven.
We are looking at how to add value when we are looking at opportunities. The foundation is, of course, our values, our culture. The organizational structure of the company, and this is a whole presentation by itself, but it's based on a matrix profile. Meaning that we are utilizing competencies across the world in one chain, in one command, in one way of creating value. By doing that, you are able to optimize the organization. You are also able to put in the best resources where they are most needed. Keep in mind that in the beginning, development is an activity that is focused on, then we move over into construction, heavy construction, different type of people, then we move into the operational phase. Attention from organization, from different elements and different sections of it will vary, all dependent upon where we are in this development phase.
We have a leading position on the ESG side. It has been a part of our DNA. In fact, it's a part of our organizational structure in Scatec. I'm not sure if it's a bit surprising to you, but I'll share with you. 10% of the people that work in Scatec, working within ESG part. They are integrated, 50 people are working on a day-to-day basis on projects, on the development side, on the operational side to make sure that we're getting the best out of the partnerships to support projects that we have around the world. It's a nice recognition when we get feedback, for example, from Sustainalytics, that we are number one out of 450 utilities. That's a nice confirmation to the people that we are on the right track. It's a very good recognition to all the people that work in Scatec Solar.
Now, some numbers. This is, of course, very much linked to what I said previously, our ability to generate cash. That will again be reinvested into expanding the company. We will continue to be very selective. We are not a market share company. We look for the opportunities. We scrutinize these opportunities very early on. We do financial simulations. We do due diligence. We look at on the ESG side. We do all of these things in the development phase to make sure that when we are starting to spend the heavy money, we know where the money is going to go, and we know that there is a high likelihood of success at the end when you have completed the project. We, on the power production side, are guiding on a return on equity between 12% and 16%.
Development and construction margin 10%- 12%, an important cash-generating part of our business. 15 GW will represent NOK 100 billion, as I mentioned originally, of investments. Now, a lot of that will be non-recourse financing. Of course, there will be an equity part as well. We have estimated our equity investment when you're in this 50%-60% part to NOK 15 billion-NOK 20 billion. Out of that, we will be generating liquidity from operating cash flows and available liquidity as we speak of NOK 14 billion-NOK 16 billion. I think for us, it's a very good message, and it provides us with a lot of flexibility going forward. Towards 2025, we're going to focus on spending the NOK 100 billion, creating an installed base of 15 GW. I have to mention something that is very important for us. We will not do that without strong partnerships.
Our previous success and our future success will be based on strong partnerships on the development side, on the construction side, on the financing side, and also when we're owning the assets. I will leave the word to Terje Pilskog, who is the EVP on project development for solar and wind. Together with Mikkel, Jarl, and Terje, I'll be back at the end of the presentations for a final statement and, of course, to receive your questions. Please, Terje, and thank you very much.
Good morning. I will talk about the development of solar and wind. I've been with the company since 2013. I've been in the industry since 2005, that gives us a lot of experience with regards to the development activities that we're working on here in Scatec. I will talk about the status of our pipeline. I will talk about how we are working towards our targets of reaching 4.5 GW in 2021, I will also talk about our ambitions and our strategy working beyond that. In terms of our pipeline, we see a consistent and positive development of our pipeline. The pipeline has now reached close to 12 GW in total. 2.9 GW of that is coming from the addition of the hydropower pipeline from SN Power.
On top of that, we see that we have added more than 5 GW of additional pipeline over the last two years. This is coming partly from the fact that we are focusing on larger projects, but it's also coming from the fact that we have a larger breadth of technologies that we are currently working on. You will also notice from this slide that we have not moved that much from backlog into construction in this period, and that's a reflection of the fact that we have and that we are working in emerging markets where there is some predictability. However, we expect to see a significant improvement, obviously, in this over the next couple of months during 2021.
In terms of the development of the pipeline, we see that that is a result of a consistent and robust development strategy over the last couple of years, and I would like to highlight five principles in terms of that development strategy. First of all, we are focusing on growth markets, sizable, scalable, and predictable growth markets where we can invest over time to generate the pipeline. It's important for us to have a long-term perspective on the markets that we are working on because it takes a bit of time to develop the market understanding that is required to succeed. The most scarce resource in our industry is good projects. In order to capture the good projects, we are continuing to focus on early development in our markets.
Early development gives us the access to the good projects. It also enables us to make sure that we can also capture significant amount of the value from the projects that we are developing. One of the key values of Scatec is working together. This is obviously important internally, it's also important externally, it's all about the partnerships that we are able to develop. We focus on working closely together with local partners to help us identify and develop the projects, with global partners that also help us identify projects, but also work together with us on the sponsor side. Not to forget financing institutions.
They are a crucial part of our business environment. They are also important for us both to scrutinize projects, but also to make sure that we bring the project forward to financial close and we get financing for the projects. As a fourth key principle, we have the integrated business model. We talk a lot about the integrated business model. There are many nuances related to that. I would like to highlight the fact that we work in small, agile, cross-functional team to structure and optimize the projects that we are developing. Through working and to using our end-to-end capabilities in terms of developing our projects, we see that we are able to both decipher and understand, and manage the risks related to the projects, as well as optimize the projects to make them as competitive as possible in our bidding situations.
It's also these end-to-end capabilities that make us an attractive partner from other potential developers. Finally, the fifth element here is our multi-technology approach. This multi-technology approach now broadens our access to opportunities, as well as increases our toolbox in terms of being successful in the markets that we're working on. In this chart, the check marks represent concrete opportunities that we work on in these key markets: South Africa, Brazil, India, Vietnam, and the Philippines. As you will see, we are pursuing a lot of opportunities across different technologies in these markets. On top of that, we have also added the perspective of offtake structures in this chart, state PPA, corporate PPA, and merchant market.
As you will see, we are also working across those types of contracts, which shows that we are able to work and succeed in different kinds of markets, independent of how deregulated those markets are. As a first example of our multi-technology approach, we have already closed, and we have an operational wind project in Vietnam, in the Ninh Thuan Province. It generates about 120 GWh on an annual basis, and it will provide revenues in the range of a bit more than $10 million annually on an expected basis. This project, albeit it might seem modest in terms of size, has an important economic impact for us due to the fact that we own it 100%. It has a very attractive tariff, and also the capacity factor on wind is higher than what it is on solar.
On top of that, it is also important for us that this is our first project that we invested in Vietnam. It gives us a lot of credibility in the local market. On top of that, it's also our first wind project, which will give us credibility as a wind player on a global basis. Let me then turn to our path to reach 4.5 GW by the end of this year, by the end of 2021. We do have six projects or six portfolio or projects that we're working on. In total, they represent 2.6 GW. We've already talked about Pakistan and Tunisia before. Pakistan, I'll get back to that in a minute. In terms of Tunisia, we are progressing well on that project.
As late as last week, we got the project agreements that we have been working on together with sponsors, lending institutions, and the authorities, to negotiate those in final agreement, and we got those approved by the Ministry of Energy. In terms of India, here we are working on a 900 MW project. We are in the final stages of negotiating a partnership agreement around this project. The project has received award of the tariff, and financing is in place. We expect to reach financial close of this project during the year. We have South Africa. Here we have bid in three projects, in total 600 MW capacity, so DC capacity, in the Risk Mitigation IPP Program. Here we are in discussions with the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy, in terms of including this in the program.
Finally, in Brazil, we have two projects, SPP of 101 MW. I will come back and talk a bit more about that in a minute. On top of that, we have our 530 MW Mendubim project that we secured, and we signed an MOU together with Hydro and Equinor last year. We are currently progressing well in terms of completing the commercial structure and the financing structure of that project, and we expect it to move forward shortly. In terms of Pakistan, it's a project that we've talked about already. You probably know the details about this project, but it's an important project in terms of exemplifying our close partnership with our financing institutions. FMO and Faysal Bank was instrumental in bringing this project to a record financial close in record time, worked very hard over Christmas through January and February.
Based on, and with the experience of FMO and Faysal Bank and their flexibility, we were able to meet the financial close deadlines of these projects. That was a great achievement. Another first for us is this 101-MW SPP project in Brazil. Here we're working together with our partners that we also work together with in the Apodi project, so Equinor and Hydro. The project is structured with a blended contract structure, which is a first. There is a 20-year contract that has been awarded by ANEEL for 25% of the energy. We have signed a PPA with ENGIE for 50% of the energy, and we are currently in negotiations with Hydro for the remaining energy for the first five years. Then beyond that, we will enter into new contracts to sell the remaining energy later in the years of that contract.
Let me talk a bit about the remaining pipeline and how we see our comfort in terms of also continuing to meet our goals further into the future. As Raymond has talked about, we have a target of 15 GW by 2025. We have a 12-GW pipeline, which is fairly diversified and robust. On the regional side, you will see that we have more or less the same split as we've had previously, with most of the volume in Africa and in the Middle East, but also quite a lot of volumes in other parts of the globe. On the technology side, we are still majorly within PV. You will see that we have more than 40% of our pipeline in PV, but we also now have big chunk in hydro with 20%.
In wind, we have about 15%, and also in hybrids, we have a bit more than 50%. You will see that on the technology side, we are getting a more and more diversified portfolio. On the offtake structure, you will see that most of the volume is related to FITs and long-term PPAs. We will continue to have a lot of volume related to fixed price, long-term contracts, and then the portfolio related to corporate PPAs and merchant type of markets is going to increase. For the next couple of years, we will have a lot on the long-term contract basis. There are four markets that constitute about 50% of the total pipeline, so about 6 GW. South Africa is the first. It's still our largest market. I will come back and talk a bit more about that.
We have Vietnam, which is still a significant growth market. We know that they will have to build out a lot of new energy generation capacity to sustain the economic growth. Currently, they are struggling with a large chunk of thermal power in their energy mix that also needs to be translated into renewable energy. The growth prospects in Vietnam still remain the same, and we are working on developing a broad portfolio of projects across PV, floating PV, onshore wind, and offshore wind in that market. In terms of Brazil, we've talked a bit about Brazil already. We've talked about the SPP project. We've talked about the Mendubim project. On top of that, we are also working on developing a number of additional projects, and we have our development organization on the ground that we are continuing to strengthen and build up.
In terms of India is one of the largest renewable energy markets. With a population of 1.3 billion, a total generation capacity in the range of 275 GW, with more than 50% of that generation capacity coming from coal, we see that there's going to be a significant growth in renewable energy in the market. As a matter of fact, India is targeting to add 200 GW of renewable energy between now and 2030. Our position on the ground is that we have started to build an organization. As you know, we are in final negotiations around the 900 MW portfolio. On top of that, we are working on several additional opportunities that we believe that we can bring to market relatively soon. Not to forget, and at the end, South Africa.
South Africa is expected to purchase another 10 GW of renewable energy over the next five years. This has been confirmed in the Integrated Resource Plan that was announced last year, has again been confirmed by President Ramaphosa's State of the Nation Address this February. Here in the table, you will see how the different procurement programs and bid windows is expected to come over the next couple of years. We are continuing to build up a pipeline to be ready to participate here. We have 14 PV projects in pipeline, we have four wind projects that are ready to be bid. Six of these PV projects were bid into the RMIPPPP, we still have a good portfolio to participate in the South African market.
With that, I would like to thank you for your attention, and I will hand over to Jarl Kosberg, our EVP for hydro development, that will present the hydro business to you. Thank you.
Thank you, Terje. I will talk about the hydro assets in Scatec after the acquisition of SN Power. I will go through the operating assets and the approach to project development. I will talk a little bit about hydropower in context of the market. First start with the acquisition of SN Power and the history of SN Power. SN Power was formed in 2002 as a joint venture between Norfund and Statkraft. Over the years, the company had quite an amazing development, developing 3.5 GW of power projects across Asia, Latin America, and Africa, and achieved good attractive financial returns on their investments. In 2016, Norfund and Statkraft decided to go their separate ways, and Statkraft took over the assets in South America and South Asia, Nepal and India, and SN Power was left with the remaining part.
After an acquisition in Uganda, 1.4 GW is transferred to Scatec. I think in summary, we can say that SN Power is perceived as a competent and very responsible company in terms of its development. Hydropower, a little bit about the basics of hydropower. Hydropower can provide energy. Normally when you're just terming it like that, we call the power plants a run-of-river power plant. If you have storage capability, as you can see on the picture, then you can also provide market-based dispatchable energy. For instance, peaking power, as shown on the chart on the right side. Thirdly, the hydropower can provide system stabilization and support services. This has many names, frequency support, ancillary services, standby reserve, spinning reserve, et cetera. Normally, all these features are paid either as part of the PPA in a regulated market or as individual services in an unregulated market.
Some other features are that hydropower is long-term, effectively perpetual, low operating costs, results in a solid cash flow. They are strategic to the country, may be, very importantly in connection with the changes in the energy market that are happening, an enabler to bring in other renewable energies. Here we look at the asset portfolio of Scatec after the acquisition, the key numbers and key features of those assets, in terms of capacity, ownership, and the PPA structure. It is important to note that the energy for the Philippines does not include standby reserve services provided. Going to the Philippines, SN Power entered into a cooperation with AboitizPower, jointly, in the company called SNAP, they created a strong history of value creation. They acquired the first privatized power plants in 2006, subsequently two more plants in 2008.
Initially, these facilities were in very poor condition, initially with 465 MW, of which a big part of those megawatts did not produce energy. Through a plant rehabilitation during several years, the plants were modernized and are now of very high standard, with a capacity of 642 MW. Perhaps even more importantly in terms of revenues and earnings, the transformation of market and market approach that was applied in the Philippines. There is a potential for further value creation, in that a battery system is currently under development. Also, floating solar based on a pilot plant that has been in operation for about two years, and a feasibility study is taking place on the Magat plant to apply a floating solar plant on that plant. There's also option on the other operating plants in the Philippines to do the same.
Greenfield and brownfield acquisition opportunities also exist, and I'll come back to the greenfield opportunity later. The Philippine market has gone from a regulated to a deregulated power market fairly shortly after SN Power got involved in the market. SNP is benefiting from this market through using all the market features available, actually. They are playing, they are working in the spot market, and power trading market by using the peak prices in the market, which are generally highest in the afternoon, in midday, and bidding into that market on a daily basis. They are also using the opportunity of the bilateral market to contract on one to three-year contracts, basically looking at hedging against fluctuations in the spot market.
Then lastly, and generally the biggest revenue source, is the power system support, where the plants in the Philippines are mainly providing frequency regulation, but also standby support, and thereby earning money while conserving water. The approach to doing this is an optimization model that was introduced by SN Power and Statkraft initially, and I think now it's fair to say that the competence in SNAP is on par with basically anything around in this respect. It's interesting that these deregulated markets is coming many places, and is being applied. We expect that this is going to be a development across several markets. On the right side, we see the revenue distribution. We see that 2020 was not a very good year, mainly driven by COVID, but also poor hydrology. We see that 2021 is recovering.
A lot of rain came at the end of 2020, filling up the reservoirs. We see prices are recovering as well in 2021. The Theun-Hinboun plant in Laos was developed by Statkraft in several stages, and was transferred or acquired by SN Power in 2016. The power is sold mainly to Thailand through a PPA. The plant is a seasonal storage plant with a large reservoir, accumulating water in the last part of the year, from August through December, and then producing the water in the spring, from January to June, July. We see that there are some hydraulic variations throughout the year, and 2019, 2020 were not very good years, whereas this year, again, towards the end of the year, the reservoir was completely filled up, and 2021 seems to be a relatively good year.
There is a take or pay contract, or PPA, for 90% of the water, but the income depends on the hydrology. There is some further value potential in the Philippines, now in the region, in Laos and the surrounding area, mainly because of the good standing that the plant has in the region. Uganda, Bujagali, downstream of Lake Victoria. A big upper reservoir that provides secure inflow to the plant. This is a new plant, finalized in 2012, and then acquired by SN Power in 2018. The income is secured as long as the plant can operate above the plant availability of 96%, since the power is sold based on the long-term capacity PPA. There is also further value creation in Uganda based on further privatisations that are expected to happen in Uganda .
On to hydropower development. I think what we want to do is to build on the key strengths of SN Power and the SN Power competence, as well as the Scatec way of doing project development. The focus will be brownfield projects with upgrade potential and the potential to create value in those projects, and then greenfield new projects or, yeah, with regulation capability to be able to be a market player. Hybridization is obviously a key target for us. We want to build on key strengths. I mentioned the competence in several areas. Obviously, a strong ESG and HSSE focus in everything we're doing and apply Scatec's integrated business model to basically create value along the value chain.
On the right side, you can see we're currently working on a portfolio or project in a country in Africa, where the portfolio is currently 260 MW, and we see a potential to add another 220 MW into that plant, partly based on brownfield upgrades, and some greenfield projects, and also then adding floating solar on the reservoir. I also understand that from the team visiting recently, that adding the Release concept of Scatec might be a significant opportunity. Partnership. The partnership with Scatec and Norfund is the governing body of the development in Sub-Sahara. The main purpose here is to capitalize on the very good relations and the track record that Norfund has in this region, to combine the efforts of Scatec and Norfund, in relationship to the project opportunities in Sub-Sahara. SN Power brought in a number of mature projects into Scatec.
2.9 GW of a quality pipeline. Distribution among the countries or the regions are shown, about equal in Asia and Africa, and a little less in Latin America. The majority being greenfield projects and less brownfield and hybrids, which we expect to change moving forward to even out this circle. I'll come back to the Ruzizi project. Volobe in Madagascar is a development of 120 MW. Alimit is in the Philippines, upstream of one of our operating plants. I briefly talked about the battery and floating storage in the Philippines as examples. We see that the concessions and the PPAs are generally obtained on these projects, and the focus is on procurement, contracting, and financing on the projects. Ruzizi is a project on the border between Burundi, Congo, and Rwanda, with an annual production of 951 GWh and an estimated CapEx of $ 650 million.
When we look at the CapEx over production, it's quite a good ratio, actually, and quite a competitive plant. Also given that the ancillary services or the full scale of the services of hydropower is being recognized for this plant. Yes, the 25-year concession and a 75% debt leverage is expected on the plant, and the financing is already committed for the project. Timeline, financial close expected 2022, 2023. Commercial operation date 2026. SN Power, when it entered the project, was able to adjust the design and make it to a regulating plant and generate 35% more power production for the same cost level. Quite an impressive value creation on that project. Okay, in summary, Scatec has taken over a high-quality operating asset base, and intends to intensify the hydropower project development, both targeting greenfield and brownfield developments. Hybrid solutions at the forefront.
We will adopt Scatec's integrated business model in how we will develop hydro projects as well. We will build on and use the hydropower competence across the various technologies. I understand there is now going to be a five-minute break, so let's take the break. Thank you.
[Presentation]
Hello again. I will now introduce you to our next session, which is on hybrid solutions. As we all know, the global greenhouse gas emissions currently stands at around 50 gigatons of CO2 equivalent. A lot of this is coming from the power sector, but it's also coming from a number of other sectors, as you will see from this chart. Reaching our net zero target by 2050 will imply a dramatic and very strong growth in terms of renewable energies. From this chart from the IEA, you will see that intermittent renewable energies will represent as much as 40%-50% of power generation capacity already in 2040. All of this intermittent variable renewable energy needs to be managed, and this represents a significant business opportunity. With our multi-technology strategy, we are working on a number of concepts to address this opportunity.
We are working on firm renewable power by combining PV and storage to make sure that we can overcome the intermittency of the energy. We are working on hybridizing PV and hydro to make sure that we can make the most out of hydropower plants by putting floating PV on top of the reservoirs. We are also working on replacing diesel and HFO generation in emerging markets by introducing our concept Release. Finally, we are also working on Power-to-X opportunities, where we are using competitive renewable energy to enable industrial projects like hydrogen and like water desalination, as a few examples. We will now talk about these three first concepts, and to help me do that, I would like to introduce Jan Fourie, our general manager of South Africa, who will talk about PV and batteries.
Ernest Kofi Poku, our VP Project Development of Hydropower Africa, who will talk about hybridizing hydro, and Øydis Gadeholt , who is Senior Project Developer in our Release team, and will talk about the status of our Release concept. Thank you very much. With that, I will hand over to Jan to start and continue this session. Thank you.
Good morning, everyone. My name is Jan Fourie, and I'm the general manager for Sub-Saharan Africa. I'll be sharing some thoughts of our insights around providing firm renewable power. There are several reasons why renewable energy plus batteries are so important. Firstly, intermittency is still the single biggest argument used by the anti-renewables lobby to why renewables are not equal to traditional or dispatchable base load power. The reality is that renewables used in conjunction with battery energy storage systems can now deliver dispatchable or firm power. Secondly, as the penetration of renewables increase in grids around the world, power systems require other services in addition to kilowatt hours to keep networks stable and operable. In order to do so, batteries are required to work in conjunction with renewable energy facilities. Thirdly, with a traditional wind and solar facility, kilowatt hours need to be used in real time.
Hybridization allows us to reduce energy wastage and allow many different applications depending on the needs. How does solar power and batteries work? Now, batteries cannot generate energy, but rather should be thought of as the electrical equivalent of pumped storage. Hence, battery storage systems either needs to charge from the grid and release it later or charge from excess solar production. That is, solar generation above the required export capacity. This means for solar plus batteries, the excess solar energy is stored during periods of excess generation during the day and released in periods of low or no PV generation, as the load or the power system demands. Now, there's important factors influencing sizing, and we're just naming a few. Solar irradiation and the day length. In other words, the solar intensity and how long the sun shines. Seasonal swing.
As the system need to be available all year round, we need our design to factor in shorter winter days. Also inter-annual variation. As you know, seasons are not the same every year. For example, some winters are longer and colder than others. Whether it's on-grid or off-grid application, whether there's any grid constraints, what is the specific application or use case and the testing requirements that utilities will test the system against. Solar and batteries have a variety of applications or use cases, we're just going to touch on a few. The first one is constant dispatch. In this case, the project is required to deliver a set output for a duration of time, either on a base load or mid-merit basis, that's load following.
This would be similar to either conventional coal-fired power stations or load following gas-fired power stations. This is similar to the South African RMIPP example we'll touch upon in the next slide. Some of the other services or use cases include ancillary services. In this case, the project is required to deliver active or reactive power on a short-term basis in order to stabilize the grid. Another example is renewable energy firming, and here we need to ride through variations in the daily profile to have less of an impact on the grid. Another example is peak shaving, where absorbing power in off-peak periods and discharging during peak periods to reduce peak load and defer it to a later period. Lastly, load smoothing by absorbing energy when the actual load is less than the average daily load and discharging when the load is above the daily average.
The point I want to make is that the application drives the underlying system size. Now we get to a case study, the South African example. Now South Africa continues to struggle with a constrained power supply and brownouts is an ongoing occurrence due to ailing legacy coal-fired power stations. A technology agnostic tender was launched in 2020, aiming to add 2 GW of dispatchable power to the grid. In other words, all power generating technologies were allowed to compete head-on. If we have a look at the blue dashed line on the graph on the right, your facility is required to provide power on demand between 5:00 A.M. and 9:30 P.M., all year round.
The system is also required to be grid connected within a very short space of time, which is 12-18 months from financial close, and financial close is required to be reached within four months. In other words, very aggressive timelines. Scatec submitted three bids totaling 150 MW of contracted capacity purely based on solar plus batteries. The underlying capacity of solar plus batteries are multiples of the contracted capacity in the range of 3x-4x for PV and 6x-8x for storage. That is to allow for the various factors as touched upon in the previous slide. Preferred bidders were announced last week, and Scatec is in ongoing negotiations with the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy.
As the continued decrease in technology and cost of both solar and batteries will drive increased market penetration and displacement of traditional power generation technologies. The renewables can now compete on a like-for-like basis with traditional power generation sources. The old intermittency argument has been nullified. It's something of the past. If we look towards the future, projections show that solar plus batteries will grow exponentially over the coming decades. The question is: How do we leverage Scatec's track record and market presence to build a position for hybrids? We have immediate opportunities we are working on in existing markets like South Africa, Brazil, India, and the Philippines. Given our experience with large scale solar and Release, we will leverage this experience to build a leading position in the solar and storage market. Both on utility scale and for industrial and commercial customers.
Our integrated business model allows us to optimize the system from all angles, including development, technical, financial, and operational. In closing, I want to leave you with this. We are now in a position to deliver firm power from renewable energy sources, which will become even more competitive as storage costs are driven down further. We, as Scatec, are well-positioned to be a partner of choice for utilities and corporates alike. Thank you.
My name is Ernest Kofi Poku. I'm the Vice President of Project Development for Hydropower for Africa for Scatec. I'm here today to discuss with you the opportunities for Scatec from developing hydropower and PV in combination globally. I'd like to start by explaining that hydro and solar hybrid systems combine low-cost PV with the regulating abilities of hydropower. That brings a number of benefits. Firstly, the market potential within Scatec's existing assets are 3 GW. That's clearly an attractive opportunity for us to focus on. In combination, hydro and solar plants produce increased amounts of firm power, which creates additional revenue opportunities for the company. Using the combination with existing infrastructure leads to better utilization and better economics as a result. In addition, we have a better, lower LCOE, lower levelized cost of energy, based on the fact that PV is generally cheaper to implement than hydro alone.
In addition, we can move faster because PV enables faster supply growth into existing markets where we already have a hydropower operation. Bringing PV in the relatively short period of time required for that enables us to grow that market very quickly. Just to go into hybrid PV and hydro in more detail. As mentioned, our concept is that hydro solar hybrid systems use hydropower and PV, either on the water, as shown in the picture on the right, or on the land co-located, and they have a shared substation and transmission infrastructure. There are a number of benefits that come from that. Adding PV lowers the overall system LCOE. PV and hydropower are complementary on a seasonal basis. In the dry season, the PV supplies the energy that the water would not be able to provide, and hydropower also supports PV on a daily basis.
In the interim, when there's a cloudy day or in the morning or evening where PV cannot supply as much, hydropower can take over, and that enables us to have a much higher level of firm power than either system could have alone. In addition, floating PV enables a reduced water evaporation, and the PV cooling effects enable a higher level of energy yield compared with land-based solar alone. What I'd like to now discuss is the floating PV market opportunity. Scatec's operating hydropower assets with 2 GW of floating potential on its existing assets from the reservoir site based on revenues, reservoir sites are very attractive. Scatec's projects under development have 1 GW of floating PV potential as well. If our panels covered 1% of Africa's reservoir, it would increase the 138 TWh generated in 2020 by 50%. Overall, the global potential on reservoirs exceeds 400 GW.
You can see on the chart on the right the potential. Between 2017 and 2018, the installed capacity grew from 528 MW globally to 1.3 GW, and the annual installation in 2018 was 786 MW. A number of market commentators believe it will double from there annually. I think our expectations are similar. I'd like now to tell you something about one of the projects we've been working on for a while. Scatec has a floating solar pilot on the Magat reservoir in the Philippines. This was started in March 2019 as a 220-KW peak floating test facility. Following a number of learnings, 2020 was a year of successful operations. The plan is now to install a full-scale 150-MW peak floating PV plant in two phases on Magat. That is now in the feasibility stage and under development.
Adding the floating PV plant to our portfolio in the Philippines will increase the value of the power, and that's very attractive in that particularly sophisticated market in the Philippines. Floating PV operations in Asia are a focus area, particularly with the existing assets that we have already in the country. I'd now like to say something about a development plan that we have. Right now, I'm working on a project in West Africa, which was originally envisaged as 102 MW. There's a challenge, however, in that a large reservoir would be required to ensure that there's a minimum level of firm power year-round. As you can see on the graph on the right, 33 GWh per month is what's required by the government and the utility.
We were not happy with the impact that might have, so we decided to propose an alternative solution, which is a slightly smaller hydro plant, 64 MW, combined with 125 MW of floating PV. That allows us to reduce the size of the reservoir and the hydropower infrastructure impact is reduced. On the other hand, it enables us to provide that firm level of power. You can see on the graph on the right that the solar is providing the additional power in the dry season between January and May of this year, and then the hydropower is providing the majority of the power in the wet season.
This enables us to offer a solution with a lower tariff, as well as lowering the environmental impact, which is clearly attractive for all parties. I believe based on this and the things I've said previously in this presentation, that Scatec is well-placed to take advantage of the 3 GW of hybrid hydro solar opportunities that exist across our assets, and in future opportunities as well. I look forward to working with the team to develop those projects going forward. Thank you.
My name is Øydis Gadeholt , I'm part of the core team that has developed the Release solution. We presented Release a while back, I will start with a recap of the concept. Release is rental of containerized, modular, and movable solar and storage. We offer a short timeline to deployment and flexible contract durations, our primary goal is to replace diesel in the power mix. In short, the interest we have received from customers, competitors, technology providers, and financiers makes us confident that we have found a sweet spot in a growing market. We currently have 300 MW in our pipeline, even if uptake has taken longer than expected, we are confident on the prospects going forward. I will first describe our offering in detail before providing an update on what we have done so far.
The graph shows the contract structure of our proposal, and the key difference from the standard PPA is the flexibility. First, we ask for a mobilization fee to cover the initial cost. The customer commits to an initial contract, say, five years, and then decides whether to prolong, terminate, or buy the asset. With a short initial contract, the financial commitment is reduced both on the guarantee side and on the balance sheet. If the customer prolongs beyond the 20 years, the average tariff is similar to that of a long-term PPA. The customer keeps its financial and operational flexibility while getting solar power at competitive prices. What is the key difference in the Release business model?
The projects are smaller and financed on a portfolio basis. Any potential external financing will be added on the HoldCo level rather than on the project level. The mobilization fee covers the initial expenses and immediately reduces our overall exposure. Counterparty risk is mitigated by a front-loaded rental curve, reducing the asset payback time, the movable asset, and a guarantee for a limited amount of payments. Last but not least, we're selling simplicity. A simplified structure with one contract only, making Release a plug-and-play solution. With this model, we generate healthy returns on projects in completely new segments. Our core focus is Africa. The target markets are the same as the one we have presented earlier. Off-grid mining, a big and growing market where we have a specific edge where the remaining life of mine is short.
NGOs, we've done three projects already, and there's a lot of activity in this segment. Small utilities, a core market for us going forward and where the added flexibility is of value. We're quite excited about the solution we can propose here, and I'll tell you more about that just afterwards. Then we have on-grid industrials showing a lot of interest in the benefits of captive power solutions. Since we launched Release, we have three projects installed. The Malakal project for IOM in South Sudan. The solution delivers 90% of the power at the site and is our first base load hybrid. We're currently also constructing 600 KW at a waste facility outside of Oslo, and the projects will allow us to observe the benefits of bifacial modules in high latitudes.
Thirdly, we have a demonstration plant at Stellenbosch in South Africa, where potential customers and partners can come and have a look at our equipment. Two contracts have been signed and are currently in the execution phase. An 8.7 MW plant for a mining company in Mexico. This is a 10-year initial contract with a buyout option after year five, and the project will be completed by the end of this year. We will also deliver 7.7 MW to an off-grid utility in Chad. The customer is backed by the Dutch development bank, FMO, and the first containers are currently being shipped. As I mentioned, we have a specific initiative for utilities in Africa. We've entered into an exclusive partnership with IFC to deliver Release for utilities with underdeveloped power infrastructure.
IFC will use its local network in the development phase while providing financing and guarantees to support the rental contract. We're actively pursuing several projects together. The most advanced is the 36 MW solar, 24 MWh of storage in a West African country, which will be delivered by the end of this year. This cooperation is an important milestone for us. We think the collaboration has great potential and will make a significant contribution to the electrification in Africa, and that we're quite excited about. Going forward, we will be focusing on further maturing the projects in our pipeline, which is 300 MW and growing. The largest segments are utilities and mining, where we have about 200 MW of advanced project. One we hope to announce shortly is a project for a mine in South Africa, where we will deliver solar for production of green hydrogen.
Solar rental is a new product in the market, and the customers are still getting used to the concept. With investors, partners, and customers eager to work with us, we have great expectations to release in the coming 12- 24 months. I will now leave the word to Julie Hamre and Roar Haugland to cover how we work with ESG. Thank you.
[Presentation]
Hi. Good morning. I am Roar Haugland, EVP Sustainable Business and HSSE in Scatec. I'm here today, this morning, together with Julie Hamre, Senior Manager in ESG Reporting and Strategy. Let me just dive in. We know the importance of doing business in a sustainable way, and ESG is a true integrated part of our business model. From the fundamental environmental social management system, the ESMS, to describe how we prepare, plan, and operate our projects, all through the team of some 50 dedicated workers in the area of sustainability within the company. De-risking projects can be done with careful attention to ESG. We know that. It makes projects meet timeline and be predictable and represents the best way of obtaining good relations with the neighboring communities. This always makes a good starting point for local coexistence and accept.
We build all our projects adhering to the IFC Performance Standards. This is the comprehensive set of standards you have to comply with, knowing you want to meet the highest ESG standards. In addition, we very often work with project finance institutions, which again adds their joint requirements to responsible business conduct. Together, these standards and guidelines makes out a set of very solid and strong frameworks over which we perform and manage our ESG risks. This is a schematic chart illustrating how integrated our ESG work is. The top bar shows the phases a project passes through on its way to operation. At each of the bar stops, if you like, a management decision gate will be demand, a factual status and compliance to all ESG matters at hand.
We establish the environmental and social impact assessment, a map leading to mitigating actions to be met, making the project compliant. Our actions are monitored and reporting, making sure to be on track. We put emphasis on stakeholder engagement, where uncompromised informative dialogue, where our local CLOs are at the centerpiece. Grievance mechanisms are established in all projects, both physically and on the web. A special focus has been put on supply chain management, keeping dialogue with suppliers on their ESG standings. Both on compliance and human rights. Further, we take great pride in our strong HSSE numbers for the company. Both the lost time injury frequency , LTIF, and the total recordable injury frequency, the TRIFR, with 0.8 and 1.1 respectively, per million hours worked, are very strong numbers. Considering some 80% of the local workforce are often unskilled labor, this makes it even stronger.
We know that this is a result of a well-drilled procedures and firm training over time. All our projects undergo greenhouse gas emission reporting, and a strategy for end-of-life management is being worked on. To a couple of examples on sharing how this work is being conducted on the ground. What type of risks do we meet? In Egypt, for instance, shown here on the picture, we built a 380-MW solar plant as the largest developer in the Benban area. It was, to date, our largest project, undertaking some 4,000 workers plus engaged at peak construction. We got our hands full, particularly on workers' condition, HSSE, accommodation, transportation, environmental spills, et cetera. It became clear that we needed to strengthen standards and called in additional resources.
Tight dialogue with local government, suppliers, and our own project team, made us able to turn it around, lift the standards as the stakeholders demanded. Now some two years into operation, small maybe, but a good example is knowing that some 400 Toyota minivans are now running in the greater Aswan area with seat belts as a result of this. Another complex undertaking is when you have to face resettlement. In the project Mocuba in Mozambique, we had to restore livelihood to some 223 households that were affected by our project. The IFC Performance Standards describes how we went about this. Clear guidelines to mapping and compensations. In this case, a land-for-land principle. This was worked out in close dialogue with the affected households and the government support. As per the Performance Standards, we will still monitor the progress of this project on a yearly basis.
In Scatec, we have worked systematically with ESG reporting for many years. In fact, we published our first report back in 2014. To talk us through where we stand now on ESG reporting, I'll give the word to Julie.
Thank you, Roar. Our ESG reporting today focuses on material ESG risks and opportunities, and also our performance and results linked to that. To make sure that our reporting is relevant, we do a materiality assessment where we engage with our key stakeholders to understand their perspectives, and we also review ESG impacts in our value chain, along with our own strategic priorities. We follow three reporting frameworks. The first one, GRI. This is still considered the leading framework for ESG reporting, and we also add other relevant elements from standards such as SASB, which focuses on financially material topics. For climate reporting, we report to the Carbon Disclosure Project. This requires a high level of transparency when it comes to how we manage our environmental impact.
Towards the end of 2020, we were quite happy with getting a top score in CDP and also a place on their list of companies tackling climate change. Finally, the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures. These are voluntary principles for companies, and they primarily relate to climate-related risks and opportunities. It's about how companies are governing this and also how they integrate this into their strategy and risk management processes. We have seen a very strong demand for this type of information from our stakeholders. We have decided to develop a full report in line with TCFD to be published later this week. We have reported on greenhouse gas emissions from our business since 2017, and our Scope 1 and 2 emissions for 2020 reached a bit more than 6,000 tons. This is quite a reduction from last year.
The reason for this is less transportation activities on the project sites. Scope 3 here is usually the most challenging category. This is because we don't have direct control over these emissions. This was a major focus for us in 2020, and during the year we established dialogue with all key suppliers of procurement items and also transportation services. This was to get better insights into their emissions reporting and also their ambitions in this area. Our Scope 3 emissions in 2020 were quite low. This is due to timing. Several of the major procurement purchases, they happened in the year before 2020. We also had less travel due to the pandemic, as most companies, and we're still gathering some emissions from our subcontractors. For this, it's much more valuable for us to take on a life cycle approach.
We did that for a 50-MW solar project. The payback time, so when we reach break even for emissions, that's estimated to approximately one and a half years. Finally, we have set a climate target in line with the Science Based Targets initiative. For Scope 1 and 2 emissions to reach net zero by 2050. We also plan to set a separate target for Scope 3 emissions, and that will depend much more on our collaboration with key suppliers going forward.
Right. Julie, thank you. Clearly we cannot leave the topic of ESG reporting without mentioning the EU Taxonomy. This is a key development in sustainable finance that gives us a clear system for defining green and sustainable activities. Julie, can you tell us a bit about how we are approaching this?
Yes. We have followed the taxonomy quite closely for some time now, and although it's not fully finalized yet, there are still a few uncertainties. We have started to assess our company and projects against the current criteria. A first step here has been to undertake an external assessment of Scatec's compliance when it comes to our solar portfolio.
Okay, are we 100% taxonomy compliant then?
Yeah. For Scatec at year-end 2020, we are fully compliant with all criteria. The company's revenues, OpEx, and CapEx are all defined as 100% green.
Right. This is good to see. I guess the big question remains, which is how we approach our hydropower portfolio. This has been debated for long, whether hydropower projects are taxonomy eligible or not, and I think the deadline, by the Delegated Act to provide the final call on this is set to end of April, for what we have heard.
Yes. This has definitely been a hot topic in our industry lately. Our understanding is that hydropower classifies as green but must meet stricter requirements compared to other renewables. The main debate here is really on the thresholds for CO2 emissions per kilowatt-hours and the measures to protect local biodiversity and ecosystems.
Okay, we have six hydropower projects in Laos, the Philippines, and Uganda. How are we making sure we are on the right track here?
Yes. First, we have a solid foundation here. I mean, all these projects were developed in line with international standards prevailing at the time of construction, such as the IFC Performance Standards. We are now mostly looking at life cycle assessments of emissions and also the Do No Significant Harm principle. For the emissions, the taxonomy has set the threshold at 100 grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hours. From what we can see so far, we are expected to be within that threshold.
Right. The DNSH, Do No Significant Harm Principle, is really at the core of the ongoing discussions on the EU Taxonomy, right?
Absolutely. I mean, there are stricter requirements to hydro compared to solar in this context, but many hydro projects are expected to be compliant to the taxonomy. I think the challenge we see with the current criteria is that it can be interpreted in different ways. At this point, we believe that the environmental and social impact assessments must be based on widely recognized international standards, and all our projects have worked according to these and will continue to do so.
Okay. What are the findings to date? Have we so far identified any significant negative impact on any of the hydro projects?
Based on our ongoing assessment against the taxonomy, we have not identified any projects with significant negative impact or any serious red flags, but this is subject to a final review when the EU taxonomy criteria is 100% set.
Very well. As soon as we have the criteria clear, we will finalize this assessment. A key takeaway from the taxonomy is to ensure that the criteria thresholds for hydropower are well integrated into our process when we develop new projects. For us, that means to continue with our high ESG standards and simply not move forward with projects that are not in line with our own requirements or the taxonomy. Right, coming to the sum up, as Raymond said earlier today, we do have considerable experience to document that we can navigate ESG in complex environments. Early involvement, as per our operating model, is key to project risk mitigation and success on the ground. With over 50 dedicated resources within sustainability in the company, additional to the skilled partners, we ensure this. We have set a climate target and will work to reduce emissions.
It's a key responsibility to our stakeholders to report transparently and stay on top of relevant regulations, starting here, of course, with the EU taxonomy. In all humbleness, if you see to the right on the slide, we are enjoying top ratings on our work with ESG, and these are our measures by leading international agencies. With that, we are excited to announce this year's report, Julie.
Yes. We are launching our annual sustainability report on Friday this week, and here you can read more about the key highlights and our performance from 2020. With that, we give the word to our CFO, Mikkel, who will take us through our financial platform. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Roar and Julie. I'm really happy to have you all listening in to our capital markets update today. We've been really looking forward to this. I will now talk in the last session here about our financial platform and the great financial platform that we've built over the last few years. It's really four points I want you to remember after my presentation. The first one is that we have established really solid long-term cash flows from a diversified asset portfolio, and this is also our main source of growth funding towards 2025. Secondly, we have excellent access to capital, both at the project level, but also at the group level. We've seen it in the past, and we expect to see it also going forward. Third, we continue to structure our projects very carefully to manage risk, manage financial risk, and political risk.
Lastly, we will continue to apply capital discipline when we invest. We focus on equity returns and on our margins across the various business segments. Let's start by just having a look back at the financial results over the last five years. We've seen a significant growth in power production as we've built and connected new power plants. In our integrated business model, we have revenues from sale of electricity, but also from development and construction of new power plants. From 2017 to 2019, we had significant contributions from these development and construction activities, and we see that growing as we move forward. In this graph, we have also included the contributions from the hydropower side with the SN Power results for 2020. As you can see, the combined company produced 3.1 terawatt-hours, revenues passed NOK 4.5 billion, and EBITDA ended close to NOK 2.5 billion.
I wanted to continue by going a bit deeper into the 2020 results. We have mapped the SN Power's business activities, here named Hydro, into our business segments in Scatec's business segments. You would expect, the main revenue and EBITDA contribution is from power production, and EBITDA has almost doubled with Hydro included, as you can see in the table here. The hydro production revenues in 2020 were impacted by low hydrology, but also by low prices in the Philippines with COVID-19. We expect that to improve in 2021. When it comes to project development, the combined company reported D&C OpEx of NOK 220 million. We spent significant amounts on development of our pipeline. About 85% of this NOK 220 million is related to development of our pipeline. The balance is related to the construction business.
Also looking at the corporate segment, we had a negative EBITDA of some NOK 200 million in 2020, this includes about NOK 100 million of non-recurring SN Power transaction costs. Going forward, our quarterly reports will not include this split into solar and hydro. We will report on the same segments as we've done before. For the power production segment, we will continue to split and provide a country-by-country P&L split, you can be able to study the developments in more detail, again, in the same way as we have done before. We have today also published a spreadsheet with the segment financials and the asset P&L breakdown for 2020, you can do your modeling before we publish our first-quarter report for 2021. Let me take one step further into the power production business. As you can see, we have a well-diversified asset portfolio.
In 2020, we reported NOK 3.4 billion of revenues from 13 countries, generating an EBITDA of NOK 2.7 billion. After service of debt at the project level, these assets generated NOK 1.1 billion of cash flow to equity. This is cash available for distributions to Scatec here in Oslo as an owner of the assets. This is happening typically six- 12 months after the cash is generated. Also important to note that we're selling power under long-term contracts. The average remaining contract tenure is more than 18 years. The exception here is the Philippines, as Jarl have explained today, where power is sold on shorter contracts. We're also providing grid support services.
I will also highlight that the concession for hydro plants on the Philippines is perpetual, so that's also a bit of an exception in our portfolio. Let me also touch upon our dividend policy, which is closely linked to the cash generated from the operating power plants. We are now lifting the cash flow from the operating power plants significantly compared to last year. The policy implies that we have an objective of paying our shareholders a consisting and growing cash dividends. From 2021, the board have decided to adjust this policy to pay out a minimum of 25% of the cash distributions received from the power plants. This was 50% in the past, but now it's a much bigger cash flow that we are paying this out of. In absolute terms, the dividends are expected to grow and increase year on year.
It also implies that we will basically utilize more of the cash that we generate to fund growth of the company. Our assets and also our integrated business model are really the basis for our financial position. Here you can see an overview of capital structure as per end of 2020, and we've adjusted for the closing of the SN Power transaction that happened in January. We're holding NOK 2.9 billion of cash at the group level and including the undrawn green revolving credit facility, we have NOK 4.4 billion of available liquidity. A very strong basis for funding of new projects in the coming months and years. If you look at the debt side, most of the debt is sitting at the project level, about NOK 10 billion net debt, and this is based on non-recourse project finance, and I'll get back to that in a minute.
We added debt at the group level with the SN Power transaction, but the debt level is moderate seen in relation to the long-term cash flow generation. Looking at the 2020 numbers, the cash flow generation represented 20% of net debt. This is also reflected in the pricing of the group debt, which is about 2.5% all in across all the group debt instruments. Green financing continues to be important for us, and it was really great to see the good response we had when we issued a EUR 250 million bond last month at below 2% interest rates. Very good access to funding also at the group level. If we move then to project funding, we really have strong partnerships with a number of institutions for both equity and debt funding of our projects.
We've raised close to NOK 20 billion of project-level funding over the last few years, and on the equity side, we're partnering with the DFIs like Norfund, Africa50, FMO, but also with Equinor and local investors. On the debt side, we raised non-recourse project finance from both commercial banks, about half of the volume, and development institutions, multilateral development institutions for the other half of the debt volume. We experienced that quality projects with a good ESG profile is in really high demand. We have excellent access to funding of these projects. Now, I also want to highlight that we, from time to time, do refinancing of our projects. Recently, one of the hydro projects in the Philippines was refinanced, and more than NOK 400 million was released to Scatec now in the first quarter of this year.
Now, a major part of financial risk management is happening through careful structuring of each individual asset and project. First, long-term PPA tenors allows for long debt tenors. That, again, allows for fairly high leverage at the project level. The interest rate is locked in. We have close to 90% of the debt volume now hedged at the project level. The average interest across our portfolio is 6.5%. This is also reflecting a basket of debt in different currencies, as you can see in the pie chart here. We match the project level debt currency with the currencies of the cash flows to create a natural hedge of our dividends. Another important feature in terms of financial risk management.
The pie chart here gives you a split per currency of the EBITDA generated in 2020. You can see one-third of the EBITDA is linked to US dollars. This is from markets like Egypt and Uganda, but also Jordan and Honduras and other markets have dollar-denominated tariffs. It's not all local currencies, but hard currencies as well in the mix here. Raymond also pointed to this. We continue to stay selective when we invest. The renewable market is massive. There is lots of opportunities. We need to continue to be disciplined. We normally model 30-year cash flows. Based on our current pipeline, we expect 12%-16% return on equity. This range represents an average across technologies, regions, and currencies.
Obviously, there will be certain projects with a lower return and some with higher, depending on the regions and the currencies and the nature of the projects. Hydropower investments are generally expected to yield higher returns than, for instance, solar. On the development and construction side, we expect gross margins in the range of 10%-12%. This is also important. This is reflecting both a development margin, but also a construction margin. A lot of the value creation here is related to development of projects, but of course, construction is also important. Now we guide on a D&C revenues of some 50%-70% of the project CapEx, dependent on our role in the projects.
This is a number that's been 75%-80% in the past on the solar side, but we see that on the different technologies, that the scope of work and the role that we take in the project will vary more than in the past. Let's also have a closer look at the 15-GW business plan and the funding of it. We expect NOK 100 billion investments for 12 GW, and this is based on a mix of technologies where solar is expected to represent the largest share of the growth. We have good access to funding, as I mentioned, and we plan for 60%-70% of the CapEx to be funded by non-recourse project finance. There's no fundamental change here really from the past.
We also expect to bring in project equity partners before construction start for 40%-50% of the equity, meaning that we retain 50%-60% of the equity in the projects. On that basis, we expect equity investments to be in the NOK 15 billion-NOK 20 billion range. To the right of the slide, you can see the funding of this equity. NOK 10 billion-NOK 12 billion is expected to be funded from cash flow from operations. The largest part of this, again, is cash flow from existing power plants, but also cash from development and construction of new plants in this timeframe. In this same number, we have also deducted the shareholder dividends that we expect to pay in this same timeframe.
As I mentioned, we hold NOK 4.4 billion of cash and credit lines, meaning that we need to fund around NOK 1 billion-NOK 4 billion from other sources. This is really a very limited amount seen in relation to the NOK 100 billion business plan. This NOK 1 billion-NOK 4 billion can be sourced in several ways and will also depend a lot on the timing of new projects coming in. We have further debt capacity at the group level, and we can sell or reduce holdings in existing assets, or we can tweak our project model and quite easily cover this amount by, for instance, also looking at the equity stake in some new projects. Then I want to give you some more guidance for 2021. Our main principle for guidance for power production would be focusing on volumes going forward.
Since we're now closing in on the first quarter, we found it prudent to also guide you a bit on the power production EBITDA at this time. In Q1, we expect to produce between 800 GWh and 825 GWh , and we expect to report a power production EBITDA of some NOK 660 million-NOK 680 million. This is up from NOK 573 million in the same quarter last year. For the full year, we expect production to reach 3,500 GWh - 3,700 GWh , and this is up about 20% from last year. We provided guidance for the services segment earlier, and this is broadly unchanged. For the new corporate segment, we expect an EBITDA of negative NOK 110 million going forward.
Just let me summarize this by reiterating that we have built a very robust platform for growth and to support our growth plans in the years to come. We have excellent access to project-level funding and group funding, and we have the financial resources available now to realize our 15-GW business plan towards 2025. Raymond.
Thank you very much, Mikkel. I guess we are coming towards the end of our capital markets update. You heard Mikkel now talk about our financial strength. I believe that you share my view that we are very well prepared for what we see down the road. We have a strong pipeline, more than 10 GW. Of course, you know that this pipeline is a dynamic pipeline. We have increased the pipeline by many gigawatts over the past couple of years only. This activity of project development will, of course, continue as we speak. I believe that for the development teams, and we have a very professional, dedicated team. They are going to look at the markets. They are going to pick the best opportunities. As I have said before, we are not a market percentage or market share type of company.
We really assess our opportunities in detail very early in the process. With regards to the organization, the market is dynamic. It's moving fast, which is extremely good news for the reduction of the CO2. Our challenge, which we have been doing over the past few years as well, is to be able to match the competence profile of the people that work in our organization to the strategic direction of the company, and also to be able to entertain business opportunities that we are just seeing the beginning of now, where we can maybe see a combination of many technologies into one different contract forms that we have been presented for today as well. I'm very optimistic about the future. We're going to work towards realizing the 15 GW by end of 2025. For that, we will invest NOK 100 billion.
As Mikkel just described, we are also generating a very strong cash flow that will support us achieving those goals. That concludes the presentation mode of today. We are very happy then to include Terje and Jarl as well for the questions that hopefully we have been receiving. Ingrid?
Yes, we have some questions. We'll start with, what is the status of the Risk Mitigation Power Tender in South Africa?
In terms of the Risk Mitigation IPP Program in South Africa, we have to limit our information and communication to what is publicly available. What is publicly available is that last week, 1.85 GW of contracted capacity was awarded. That means that 150 MW of contracted capacity is still not awarded relative to the target of the Department of 2 GW. We bid in 150 MW of contracted capacity up to 600 MW of DC capacity. We are currently in discussions with the Department with regards to that capacity, and we will try to come back to the market in a matter of weeks in terms of the status there.
If we move to India, what kind of structure and tariff level will there be for the 900 MW?
Yeah. In terms of the 900 MW partnership opportunity we are negotiating in India, we can at this point not comment on the tariff level, but it is a 50/50 partnership on the equity side. Due to the timing of the project and how mature it is in terms of financing and the experience of our local partner in terms of EPC work in this specific project, it will be our partner that will do the EPC part of the project.
Another one on Tunisia. We have seen some delays in Tunisia. Can you please elaborate on the status of this project?
Yeah. The status of our projects in Tunisia is that over the last months, we have been negotiating the project agreements with sponsors, with lenders, and with the authorities. That negotiation has now been concluded, and the project agreements have been approved by the relevant committee of the Ministry of Energy there. We expect to sign the PPAs shortly, and then it is likely to be a six to nine months period until financial close.
We have a question on floating solar. What technologies are you working on for floating solar?
Yes. We have evaluated, I think, more than 10 different technologies on floating solar. On the pilot in the Philippines, we used the Ocean Sun concept, but there is a lot of development in this area, and we are continuously evaluating the technology that we will apply on this, and really no selection has been made with respect to the concept.
Then on hydropower, can you also elaborate a bit on the brownfield opportunities that you see?
Yes. In our markets, the utility companies are generally in a quite poor state financially and to some extent, operationally. That leaves a lot of the power plants, the operating power plants, in quite a poor state. That, we believe, represents an opportunity for us to come in and improve and modernize those plants. We believe that is a significant market for us moving forward. I think today I mentioned one example in one country in Africa where we are concretely looking at brownfield opportunities.
On ESG, can you say something about how you conduct your compliance assessments with regards to ESG?
I can maybe answer that.
Yes.
We are doing very thorough due diligence when it comes to compliance when we enter into new projects. We are obviously doing background checks on potential partners and the companies involved, if any. What is also important for us is to make sure that we understand the procurement program. Here we work also very closely with the development finance institutions that have often been involved in designing procurement programs for a number of the markets that we're involved in, so that we make sure that there is integrity in those processes. That's just a couple of examples of what we do when it comes to compliance due diligence.
Will the new growth target be based on organic growth, or also M&A?
Our new growth target will basically be organic growth. By saying organic growth, it also includes acquisition of some pipelines like we have been doing in the past. It does not include any sort of major acquisitions of companies. This is nothing new to us. For the next five years, we have ample opportunities out there in the market.
Can you also indicate the split of technologies for this growth?
Maybe you can, or Jarl. I mean
Terje.
Terje .
In terms of the future growth, our current pipeline is a good indication of the technology split for our future growth. In the current pipeline, we have more than 40% pure PV, and then we have a good split between wind, hydro, and hybrids for the remaining part of the pipeline.
There have been a few questions about if we expect to issue new equity to fund this growth plan.
As I said in my presentation, the funding here is really well covered by the cash flows that we generate already from existing power plants. We are fairly confident that we control our own destiny when it comes to the funding here. Of course, we have a lot of flexibility in how we structure these projects and as I alluded to in my presentation, we are basically more or less covered when it comes to funding.
What do you see as the major challenges in delivering of the new growth targets?
Going from where we are today to 15 GW in 2025 is by itself a challenge. If you look in the past to sort of get some guidance on what the challenges are going to be over the next few years, it is keeping a forward movement of the pipeline in a manner that will create execution progress more even. In 2017, 2018, we had a lot of projects being executed, and then we went into a development period. For our organization, I think increasing the pipeline to be able to sort of dose in new projects that are matching the capacity at all times of our organization is going to be important. It's not easy. At the same time, we are developing our development teams.
We are developing the execution team to include Of course, we are getting hydropower with SN Power, more wind competence, solar power we have, battery storage execution muscles needs to be developed. We are trying to be ahead of the pipeline here and of the activity level. In terms of financing capacity, I don't believe, and listening also to Mikkel now, I don't think that's going to be a challenge. The debt capacity out there is readily available for good quality projects. It's going to be a rapidly developing company over the next few years, but I think our past has shown that we are able to manage growth, and I'm certain that we'll be able to manage the growth that we have ahead of us as well. I guess that was the last question, Ingrid.
I think we'll leave it at that.
Okay.
Thank you very much, and thank you all of you for listening in and watching. Thank you.