More renewables projects in the pipeline: UAE’s Masdar, Infinity Power, and Hassan Allam Utilities will set up USD 900 mn worth of solar power plants in Upper Egypt with a combined capacity of 1 GW after the Madbouly government greenlit the move, according to an anonymous government official speaking to Asharq Business.

What’s the plan? The projects will be built under a build-own-operate (BOO) contract and should be up and running and feeding the national grid before the end of 2025.

What’s next? The final agreements should be signed in October, the source said, adding that final reviews are underway to set the price of the energy sold from the project. The companies will receive usufruct rights for the land in exchange for 2% of the energy produced.

But we might have actually heard about the project before: It remains unclear if the project is the same one the cabinet approved in late August — the consortium’s 1.2 GW solar project and 240 MW/hour of storage batteries.

The consortium has a lot in the pipeline: It is currently working to set up a USD 11 bn, 10 GW wind farm in Sohag that is set to be one of the largest wind farms globally and the largest in Africa. Masdar is also working with Infinity and the EETC to construct a 200 MW wind farm in Ras Ghareb.

REMEMBER- We have big renewable ambitions: The state plans to add 28 GW of renewableenergy to the country’s energy mix over the next five to seven years and it wants to see 3-4 GW-worth of renewable energy projects go live and start feeding the national grid by next summer to fill the energy supply gap.

MORE WASTE-TO-ENERGY PROJECTS-

Waste not, want not: Arab Contractors affiliate Nahdet Misr Environmental Services is looking to set up two waste-to-energy (WtE) projects in Alexandria, managing director Mohamed Abdelatif told Al Mal. The first project will have initial investments of USD 100 mn and the company wants to set up the projects in partnership with China’s TEDA Holding, according to Abdelatif.

What’s next? Nahdet Misr for Environmental Services is in talks with authorities to find the suitable plots for the projects. The company aims to commence work on the first project as soon as possible.

Who’s doing what? TEDA Holding will fund the project, while Nahdet Misr will be responsible for providing the waste.

Fresh incentives for WtE projects may also be on the way: The Environment Ministry is considering raising the feed-in tariff rate for WtE plants — the set price that the government pays for the electricity they generate — in a bid to make the sector more attractive to investors, Waste Management Regulatory Authority (WRMA) consultant Khaled Elfarra recently told Enterprise. The proposed price increase would see the feed-in-tariff rate rise to around EGP 2.35/Kwh — up from EGP 1.40/Kwh, which hasn’t changed since 2019. The tariff will fluctuate along with exchange rate fluctuations, he added.

Nahdet Misr isn’t the only company gearing up to launch WtE projects in Egypt: We heard last month that the government is set to sign contracts collectively worth up to USD 1.2 bn with eight local-foreign consortiums to produce a total of 1.7 bn Kw/h of electricity from municipal solid waste across a number of governorates, according to Elfarra.

And the government wants WtE to play an important part in the country’s energy mix: The government has long been planning to boost electricity generation from municipal waste, initially setting a target back in 2020 of generating 300 MW of electricity from WtE projects by 2025.

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