Egypt, responsible for no more than 0. 6 percent of global greenhouse fuel emissions, is highly responsible for water scarcity, emerging sea levels and other adverse effects of climate change.
To adapt and mitigate, the country has transitioned to a sustainable economy, and COP27 has accelerated the speed of the transition. According to the National Climate Strategy published in May, the government needs to spend $211 billion on mitigation and $113 billion on adaptation through 2050, with budgets deployed in key sectors such as energy, transport, agriculture and water.
In July, Egypt launched its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), a measure of countries’ efforts to reduce emissions and adapt to the effects of climate change, updating figures presented in its 2015 NCDs. The new submission includes plans for emissions through a third to expand the contribution of renewables to the energy mix from 10% today to 42% by 2035.
The last step on the road to greener energy is to invest more in green hydrogen, a green fuel that produces 0 greenhouse fuel emissions and can be used in many industries.
While Egypt plans to launch its national green hydrogen strategy at COP27, recent months have noted dozens of initial agreements and memoranda from (MoU) to produce green hydrogen in the Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCZ). By some estimates, the price of green hydrogen and ammonia projects in the pipeline is $64 billion.
The war between Russia and Ukraine has highlighted the need to find select energy resources and Egypt will use its COP27 to promote SCZ as a new regional hub for green hydrogen production.
Egypt aims to meet 8 of the global call for green hydrogen, which will generate annual export revenues of $18 billion, Electricity and Renewable Energy Minister Mohamed Shaker said at last week’s economic conference.
Most of the new projects will target, at least initially, foreign markets. One example is the new green hydrogen and ammonia plant in Ain Sokhna, built through Norwegian power company Scatec and Egypt’s sovereign wealth fund. It will have a production capacity of one million tons with the year, with an expansion capacity of 3 million tons, all of which will be exported.
This year, the government added green hydrogen and ammonia manufacturers to corporations covered by the Investment Act of 2017, granting them investment incentives that come with a 30-50% deduction of their tax expenditures prices and a flat rate on their imports.
In early March, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) signed a memorandum of understanding with the Ministries of Electricity and Oil to create a comprehensive national hydrogen strategy covering supply, demand and generation infrastructure.
The goal of 42% renewable energy may seem ambitious, but according to Reuters, a report published by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) in 2018 suggests that Egypt can also generate 53% of its electricity from renewables by 2030.
A report released in July by American Global Energy Monitor, a research organization focused on blank energy, noted that Egypt’s wind and solar operating capacity puts the country in the smartest regional ranking, generating 3. 5 GW a year. The figures come with only large-scale projects with a capacity of at least five megawatts. Egypt is the MENA region’s leader in wind power, generating 1. 6 GW of electricity.
The 2014 crisis of strength, which led to repeated cuts, triggered Egypt’s shift to the renewable force. The move coincided with a revision of the force subsidy formula and the advent of a feed-in tariff formula to inspire investment in renewable force.
According to Global Energy, Egypt is on track to bring 3. 3 GW of large-scale wind and solar projects by 2024, helping to meet the goals of Egypt’s embodied sustainable energy strategy of 52 GW of renewable energy on a large scale and distributed on the grid across all renewable resources through 2035.
The Benban solar project, located in Aswan, represents a major step in the transition to renewable energy. The solar photovoltaic park is one of the largest in the world and has been developed through more than 30 corporations from 12 countries. The developers of the plant, located 40 km northwest of Aswan, benefit from a guaranteed feed-in tariff for 25 years. The Benban plant was connected to the national grid in 2019.
The 1. 5 gigawatt allocation will power more than one million homes and help Egypt reduce its carbon footprint. It is expected to save two million tons of greenhouse fuel emissions a year, the equivalent of taking 400,000 cars off the road, according to International Financial Cooperation (IFC), one of the main investors in the allocation.
Following the 2014 plan to reduce energy subsidies, phase out electric power subsidies and open the door to personal sector participation in renewable energy generation by publishing a feed-in tariff program to leverage the capital and expertise of the personal sector for renewable energy expansion. the Benban structure marked a turning point in Egypt’s energy expenditure.
Egypt is also expanding in wind power generation with more than 10 wind farms in El Zaafarana, Gulf El Zayt and Ras Gharib, the latter being Egypt’s first independent wind farm. $380 (WHAT MILLIONS??), Orascom Construction with 20%. Partial operation began in October 2019 and full capacity was reached in December 2019. In particular, Orascom Construction and its allocation partners held a rite to announce the start of the structure of another 500-megawatt farm in the same domain last week. .
The government also seeks to inspire investors to exploit the waste-to-energy (WtE) sector. In 2019, it issued rules for investments in WtE and established a feed-in tariff. In 2020, the government announced that it plans to generate three hundred MW of electricity from WtE projects until 2025, so far only five corporations operate in the WtE area, generating a total of thirteen MW.
* An edition of this article appears to be printed in the November 3, 2022 issue of Al-Ahram Weekly.