Acwa Power Egypt Country Director Hassan Amin on why desalination is about a whole lot more than addressing water scarcity

Coffee with Acwa Power Egypt Country Development Director Hassan Amin: EnterpriseAM sat down with executive committee member of the Regional Center for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency and Egypt’s Country Development Director at Acwa Power Hassan Amin (LinkedIn) to discuss the role Acwa Power has played in the country’s energy transition and what’s next for the Saudi renewables giant in Egypt.

Acwa Power started operations in Egypt more than ten years ago, back in late 2014, Amin told us. Initially, the company was focused on a 2.3 GW combined cycle project (pdf) in Dairut, but as Egypt shifted its focus toward renewables, the project was later replaced by a 1.1 GW wind farm in the Gulf of Suez, on which construction began at the start of the year, we were told. The company’s first projects to get off the ground were three solar projects in Benban totaling 120 MW, which created a solid presence in the country for Acwa Power to build on, he said.

The company’s next project in Kom Ombo claimed the mantle of having the country’s cheapest solar energy tariff at the time for the whole of North Africa, which furthered Acwa Power’s position in the renewables market. This 200 MW solar farm has now been up and running for a year and a half, we were told, powering some 130k households and offsetting 280k tons of carbon dioxide every year.

Looking ahead, Acwa Power is interested in Egypt’s desalination push, which Amin thinks the company could play an important role in, given “we are the largest producer of desalinated water in the world and would like to transfer our expertise to Egypt.”

“Desalination is about more than addressing water scarcity or the Renaissance Dam in Ethiopia,” as it can expand habitable areas outside of the Delta and the thin strip of land hugging the Nile, Amin argued. The declining cost of desalination supports the move to think about desalination away from just water scarcity, he added.

In some cases, desalination can actually be cheaper than pumped water, Amin pointed out. Pumping water from the Nile to the Red Sea requires a huge amount of energy and infrastructure, not to mention the amount of water that’s lost from leakage, which can reach 20-25%, he added.

Green hydrogen may be the fuel of the future, but every new technology faces challenges, Amin argued. In the same way that solar used to be criticized as an unviable alternative to fossil fuels due to its cost premium, green hydrogen will at some point be competitive with the energy sources it's trying to replace. And with a competitive price will come offtakers willing to commit to the switch.

Acwa Power is open to any type of renewables project regardless of the tech used, whether battery energy storage systems, pumped storage, or other technologies, Amin told us, explaining that “in the end, we are a developer, not a technology provider.”

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