Egypt Fast Becoming A Hot Renewable Energy Market
Originally published on Planetsave.
With ample natural resources to supply the renewable energy market, Egypt is finally finding its way to a cleantech future. Plagued with chronic shortages in electricity supply, a new, ambitious wind and solar procurement schedule is propelling the country forward. Released recently by Apricum–The Cleantech Advisory, a renewable energy market briefing anticipates Egypt assuming a position as a “renewable energy powerhouse” in the near future.
With around 90 million inhabitants, Egypt is the Arab World’s most populous country. Although recent political turmoil embroiled the country in revolution and counter-revolution, the turbulence has greatly subsided and social structures are stabilizing. As the second-largest economy in Africa, economic challenges have now become the focus of Egypt’s government and business leaders.
Egypt’s Projected Renewable Energy Growth
Stirring discontent, the frequency of electric blackouts are negatively impacting domestic life and industrial development. Urgently wishing to meet the soaring rate of power consumption with a stable supply, an additional 13 GW of capacity must be brought online in Egypt over the next five years. Solar and wind power in Egypt are anticipated to greatly help relieve this pressure. Thanks to a generous feed-in tariff (FIT) announced in September 2014, Egypt will procure 4.3 GW of solar and wind power production by 2017.
The incentive structures recently announced are considered both ambitious and credible. Egypt’s solar PV market and wind market are projected to grow cumulatively to approximately 2 to 3 GW each by 2020. Apricum reports that, with its “exceptional availability of solar and wind resources,” Egypt has earned “a spot on the global renewable power development hot list.”
Headquartered in Berlin, Apricum–The Cleantech Advisory offers strategy consulting services, market entry support, and transaction advisory. With offices in the USA, UK, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Brazil, India, China, Turkey, South Korea, and Japan, Apricum focuses on assisting global clients to develop sustainable growth in renewable energy and clean technologies.
Explaining the ambitions behind Egypt’s new FIT, Apricum Project Manager Martin Mitscher stated in the recent briefing that Egypt’s next steps are crucial. As author of the briefing paper, Mitscher recognizes that the Egyptian government must equally harness market enthusiasm, as well as the country’s significant solar and wind resources.
“After the FIT announcement,” said Mitscher, “we saw a rush from local and international solar developers to get their foot in the door. A stunning 178 project proposals were submitted for more than double the announced capacity of 2 GW.” Local firms as well as many international renewables industry major players have been attracted by the FIT. Of the 178 proposals, 69 projects achieved qualification. Potential lenders must now be provided a financial framework by the Egyptian government to facilitate satisfactory terms of finance for developers.
Egypt “On the Hot List of Global Renewable Power Developers”
Poised to grow a significant renewable energy market in the near term, Mitscher believes Egypt is “exhibiting the necessary key drivers of rapidly growing power demand, exceptional availability of solar and wind resources, and the need to reduce domestic fossil fuel consumption.” Mitscher reports, “Egypt is definitely on the hot list of global renewable power developers at the moment.”
As the initial 2.0 GW target for wind power on the first procurement round was not fully reached, a second procurement round is expected sometime before July, 2015. Additionally, in the private sector there is already 720 MW of combined capacity under construction, due to the recent establishment of a merchant IPP scheme.
“With well-managed implementation,” summarizes Project Manager Mitscher of Apricum, “Egypt could become one of the leading renewable energy markets in the MENA region in a short space of time.”
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This development also reminds us that renewable energy, especially small scale, is far less susceptible to terrorist disruption than the existing highly explosive fossil sources.
If a terrorist wants to disrupt electricity, it’s much easier to burn a transformer station to the ground than to attack a power plant. Power stations aren’t all that explosive really, you’d have to very precisely sabotage a specific part of the power station.
Destroying a transformer or major power line is also more effective: it can take several different power stations in the same area offline in one go – including grid-connected distributed generation.
explosive fossil sources, torched oil trucks US army, in Afghanistan, blown oil wells in Iraq, Tsjernobil explosion, Fukushima explosions, FF train explosions in USA. endless list of FF, nuke explosions.
Endless list of nuke explosions? Besides two you mentioned, the other known ones are in military, not civilian power production.
Because the reactors belonged to the military then their meltdowns don’t count?
What I meant was mostly wrt nuclear testing (and WW2 usage), which are by far the most common nuclear explosions. Ruling those out seems to bring the list down to a small number.
I would be interested in list of known explosions of military nuclear facilities too, for general knowledge. Even if they do not count (IMO) when discussing the general issue of energy production. Military’s goals differ too much from civilian uses to be very relevant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_meltdown#Nuclear_meltdown_events
BTW, it was just announced that almost all the fuel in Fukushima #1 has melted.
If a major power plant goes down that is millions of people off line.
Renewables are more localised so damage is local.
don’t give the towel heads any ideas
Solar has no boundaries. Egypt has a never ending energy supply, only thing to catch it with cheap Solar PV and Wind Power. the low price of Solar energy supply will grow Solar in Egypt very fast. nice article. more to come with no doubt.
About time, considering the solar resources they have. All those countries around the equator can benefit a lot more than ones in the middle latitudes.
middle lattitudes can benefit also, I live in the Netherlands, and my Solar installation produces 1 on 1. 1Kwh installed, 1 Kwh produced.
as long as the sun shines.
and the sun will shine on for ages.
My sun has to take over when I am gone.
Solar has no limits. no time, place and power limits.
No argument here. Just saying those countries have a goal mine of sun resources.