Pasadena-based infrastructure and engineering services firm Tetra Tech Inc. has nabbed a pair of contracts worth $158 million from the United States Agency for International Development.
On June 20, Tetra Tech announced that it won an $85 million increase to an existing contract with the federal agency to strengthen energy security in the Republic of Moldova.
Then, on July 1, the company announced the USAID had awarded it a $73 million contract to increase access to affordable and reliable electricity in 18 West African countries.
These are the latest in a long line of USAID contracts for Tetra Tech; just this past January, the company announced another pair of contracts from the agency totaling $58 million. One of those contracts was for work in Cambodia; the other was for sustainable economic development strategies across all of the agency’s international development projects.
Returning to this latest round of USAID contracts, to carry out the agency’s work in Moldova, Tetra Tech is supporting the Moldovan government to advance an independent, sustainable and clean energy sector. One of the key projects is to develop a utility-scale battery energy storage system into Moldova’s electricity system to help strengthen the national power grid.
Besides the environmental benefits, the work also has geopolitical benefits in that it is designed to lessen Moldova’s dependence on its energy-rich giant neighbor, Russia. Last year, Moldova weaned itself completely off natural gas supplies from Russia. But the country still gets more than two-thirds of its electricity from Russian-owned generating plants, according to an analysis from the European Council on Foreign Relations. And it remains in a frozen conflict with Russia-backed breakaway state Transnistria, which remains almost entirely unrecognized by the rest of the world.
In the same vein, the other contract Tetra Tech received from the USAID, for $73 million, is to help the agency develop sustainable and more reliable energy supplies and strategies in 18 West African countries.
Tetra Tech experts will help design and implement national electrification programs, modernize transmission and distribution utilities, deploy clean energy technologies and catalyze energy investments.
“Tetra Tech has partnered with USAID and the U.S. government to increase access to cleaner, more reliable energy in sub-Saharan Africa for more than 30 years,” Dan Batrack, Tetra Tech’s chief executive, said in the announcement. He added the company will use its expertise to “modernize utilities, attract investment, and connect millions of homes and businesses to electricity supplies that are vital to power economic growth.”
