Mirna Fahmy
Egypt is stretching many strategies, projects, investments, and initiatives to shift to renewable energy consumption over fossil fuels.
Egypt ranked second after Morocco in the Middle East and North Africa in the Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) for the year 2024, the Egyptian Cabinet’s Information and Decision Support Center (IDSC) announced.
The progress has been shoveled in because Egypt has taken measures to invest in large-scale renewable energy projects, such as encouraging the installation of solar and wind energy.
Egypt ranked 22nd out of 67 countries, ahead of Algeria, in 54th place, Turkey, in 56th place, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which came in 65th place.
The highest monthly average maximum temperature in Egypt during the year 2022 was 42.6 degrees Celsius in the month of August at the Aswan monitoring station, according to the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS). The minimum temperature reached 29.7 degrees Celsius in August at the Sharm El-Sheikh monitoring station, and the Port Said monitoring station recorded the highest monthly average. The relative humidity in Egypt during the year 2022 reached 81% in December.
Determined to fully shift to renewable energy production, Egypt submitted its second nationally determined contribution (NDC) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in June 2023. Adjustments were only deducted in emissions reduction targets in the power sector, where Egypt wants to reduce 65% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from oil and gas, 33% in electricity generation, transmission, and distribution, and 7% in the transport sector, all compared with 2030 ‘business-as-usual’ levels.
For quite a time, Egypt has been promoting the installation of solar and wind energy through investment in large-scale renewable energy projects.
The government is stretching its strategies on increasing the supply of electricity generated from renewable sources to 20% by 2022 and 42% by 2035, according to the International Trade Administration. This will be achieved through wind providing 14 percent, hydropower 1.98 percent, photovoltaic (PV) 21.3 percent, wind 14 percent, concentrating solar power (CSP) 5.52 percent, and conventional energy sources 57.33 percent by 2035. This is a golden chance for Egypt because it possesses an abundance of land, sunny weather, and high wind speeds, making it a prime location for renewable energy projects.
One of the major renewable energy projects that is considered the largest in Africa is the 1.8 GW Benban solar park with a $4 billion. Benban solar park is a power complex of 41 solar power plants being developed in Benban, located in the Aswan governorate, Egypt superintended by the state-owned New and Renewable Energy Authority (NREA). The project is a part of Egypt’s Nubian Suns Renewable Energy Feed-in Tariff (FiT) programme which was announced in September 2014, aligning by 2035 Sustainable Energy Strategy. NREA is a pioneering initiative aimed at bolstering the country’s renewable energy sector.
Despite all these efforts, Egypt still missed points to escalate in this year’s ranking. CCPI report pinpointed that Egypt dropped two places this year than the previous year 2023 when it was in the 20th place, due to the country’s focus on expanding fossil gas production particularly natural gas and is actively investing in finding and extracting more reserves. However, the government’s intentions are aiming towards Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) than gasoline, especially in transportation that represents 48% of total petroleum energy consumption and 23% of energy related to carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Though CNG might be cleaner, it’s still a fossil fuel and doesn’t address the core issue of transitioning away from fossil fuels altogether.
By this, the country is the African continent’s second largest gas producer, per Climate Action Tracker (CAT) report, responsible for over one-third of total fossil gas consumption. The current 2030 target would still see emissions continuing to rise, surpassing even the levels expected with the current policies in place. The CAT continues to rate Egypt’s overall climate action as “Highly insufficient”.
To induce improvement and escalate further in the ranking, CCPI was wishing that Egypt would seize the opportunity of hosting COP27, the UN climate change conference in 2022.
While there is progress in the renewable energy initiatives and projects, the current share of renewables in Egypt’s energy mix is only around 5.56%, placing them very low (55th) in that category. This suggests they haven’t ramped up renewable energy adoption as much as experts hoped. Also, CCPI experts believe Egypt didn’t strengthen its own climate targets, particularly regarding transitioning to more renewables. This could be due to various factors, like economic considerations or infrastructure limitations.
In 2016, Egypt ranked 30 in the CCPI ranking, but then it started to scale up gradually till the 19th place in 2020. Two years later Egypt dropped to the 21st place. Then it rose again in 2023 to the 20th place.