Egypt hopes to make progress with renewable energy
Egypt's Ministry of Electricity and Renewable Energy (MERE) has a plan to boost the country’s use of renewable energies.
The MERE plans to hit a benchmark of 20 percent by 2022, when the group expects renewables to provide one-fifth of all power used domestically. Recent events, however, tell a complex story of a nation struggling to make progress in the face of financial headwinds.
Egypt had a variety of investors on board for solar development and other projects, but after the devaluation of Egypt’s currency, some of those deals fell through. Still Egypt is acting with a “feed-in-tariff” scheme to promote these types of international contracts, while cutting tariff rates to $0.084 per KWh for smaller-scale solar PV plants and $0.078 per KWh for some larger facilities. There’s also an option of variable exchange rates for repayment. The move comes after the country added 6.9 GW of installed capacity to its grid last year. Egypt is also easing electricity subsidies.
For more on the outlook for Egyptian energy leadership, Gulf News Journal spoke with Daniel Armanios, assistant professor of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon’s Scott Institute for Energy Innovation:
“In terms of the Egyptian economy, increases to the local renewable sector should also increase the availability of high-paying jobs. The Egyptian economy has not adequately recovered from the recent social unrest, and there are some indications that this has worsened.”
Read the full article by Justin Stoltzfus via Gulf News Journal.
[Photo by Christopher Rose | Flickr]
