Engie-led consortium reaches financial close on 900 MW Ras Shokeir wind farm

Shokeir Wind Energy reached financial close on its 900 MW plant near Ras Shokeir in the Gulf of Suez, according to the sponsors’ joint statement (pdf), and once it’s running, it’ll be Engie’s largest onshore wind farm anywhere. Lenders have committed around USD 588 mn of non-recourse debt, the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) said in a statement on Thursday. The Finance Ministry is guaranteeing the state’s side of the 25-year power purchase agreement signed in March, under which the state grid operator buys every unit the farm produces.

Behind it is the same trio that already runs two wind farms in the Gulf of Suez. These are Engie (35%), Aeolus (40%) — Toyota Tsusho’s African renewables platform — and Orascom Construction (25%), which is also building the civil and electrical works and supplying some local components. The farm’s 86 Goldwind turbines (10.5 MW each) will take the trio’s Egyptian wind capacity from 912.5 MW to 1.8 GW once they’re all running.

Six lenders provide the debt, with the JBIC putting up as much as USD 285 mn and Nippon Export and Investment Ins. (NEXI) insuring about USD 190 mn of the commercial banks’ share at a 97.5% ratio. The rest of the syndicate is France’s Proparco, the Dutch development bank FMO, Société Générale, and Crédit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank, alongside Germany’s KfW IPEX-Bank. HSBC Bank Egypt is the working capital bank and onshore security agent, and KfW, Mizuho Financial Group, FMO, and British International Investment (BII) bridge the sponsors’ equity. The cost of building the plant has not been disclosed.

The close took longer than advertised: Orascom said in March it expected financial close by early 3Q 2026, and it landed on Friday, about four months late. But work on site didn’t wait for the money, as construction has been underway since June.

Once it’s fully running, the farm should generate about 4 TWh a year, according to Engie, and avoid roughly 2 mn tons of CO2 emissions annually. That power goes into a grid the government wants at 45% renewables by 2028, the same year this farm is due to come online.

What’s next: The first 300 MW should enter commissioning in January 2028 and the rest by 3Q 2028, the sponsors said, though the golden license the Cabinet granted on 28 October allows a little more time, pointing to completion on 1 November 2028.

In other news

The Egyptian Competition Authority has cleared EDF Power Solutions to buy 20% of Energy Valley, the company behind Scatec’s 1.95 GW of solar at East Minya and 3.9 GWh of batteries, on condition that the French utility uses the project’s commercially sensitive data only to run the project. The stake gives EDF “material influence” over the company, according to a statement by the authority, so its board and committee representatives may not share, discuss, or vote on commercially sensitive information; they must sign confidentiality agreements and face periodic compliance reviews.

REMEMBER- EDF is already Scatec’s partner on two other Egyptian projects: it holds 20% of the 1.1 GW Obelisk solar-and-battery plant at Nag Hammadi and is taking a targeted 29% of the 900 MW Shadwan under-construction wind farm. Energy Valley itself is roughly 60% owned by the platform Scatec set up with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development last month, in which the bank holds 40% of it, for up to USD 221 mn. Financial close is due before year-end.