Egypt Signs 3-GW Windfarm Deal with ENGIE

Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--Egypt continues its aggressive expansion into wind energy by signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with French energy company ENGIE SA (Paris, France) for a 3-gigawatt (GW) windfarm.

The deal was signed with a number of partners with state-owned Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company (EETC) and the New & Renewable Energy Authority (NREA) and attended by Mostafa Madbouly, prime minister of Egypt, and Mohamed Shaker, minister of Electricity and Renewable Energy. It is one of a number of significant wind energy deals signed recently by Egypt and comes just as work has begun on a 500-megawatt (MW) onshore windfarm at Ras Ghareb, located on the shores of the Gulf of Suez, which is being developed by an ENGIE-led consortium. The Gulf of Suez 2 project will be the largest onshore wind power plant in ENGIE's portfolio once fully operational in the summer of 2025. It will be capable of delivering renewable energy to more than 800,000 homes and offset CO2 emissions by approximately 1 million tons annually.

Paulo Almirante, ENGIE senior executive vice president in charge of renewables, energy management and nuclear activities, commented: "This agreement with the Egyptian authorities for a 3-GW wind farm is based on our local long-term partnerships, and on our consortium's ability to deliver and operate the first Ras Ghareb windfarm. We, at ENGIE, are very committed to supporting projects contributing to local and sustainable energy production, such as the Egyptian ones."

ENGIE commissioned the first Ras Ghareb windfarm with a combined output of 262.5-MW in 2019. Industrial Info is also tracking a project to build a 1.1-GW windfarm project located at Gebel El Zeit in the Gulf of Suez. An MoU was recently signed between Saudi company ACWA Power and The Sovereign Fund of Egypt (TSFE) to explore a joint investment in the US$1.5 billion project.

On the sidelines of the COP27 climate talks in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt's government signed an MoU with the United Arab Emirates (UEA)-based company Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company (Masdar) and partners to construct a 10-GW onshore windfarm in Egypt. The windfarm, one of the largest in the world, would produce 47,790 gigawatt-hours of clean energy annually and offset 23.8 million tonnes of CO2 emissions, roughly 9% of Egypt's CO2 emissions. It would also, according to Masdar, save the country an estimated US$5 billion in annual natural gas costs. The project will form part of Egypt's Green Corridor initiative, a giant network of renewable energy projects to ensure a 42% renewable energy share in the country's energy mix by 2035. It would also be Masdar's largest renewable energy project to date, which currently has a US$20 billion portfolio of green projects with an output of 15 GW.

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