Our solar ambitions under the spotlight: Egypt has all the resources needed to expand its solar power generation — sunny skies, large areas of unused desert land, and a developer electricity grid — yet obstacles continue to hinder its expansion plans, Reuters writes. Expanding solar energy generation, and renewable energy sources at large, has been a priority as of late after Egypt began ramping up expensive energy imports to try to close the gap between supply and demand to put an end to blackouts that had plagued the country.

So what’s the hold up? Solar players cite “market-distorting power subsidies and restrictive regulations” as reasons behind delayed rollouts.

That being said, we have a lot of solar projects in the pipeline: A number of foreign players are setting up solar projects here — most notably UAE’s AMEA Power is setting up a 1 GW solar power plant with 600 MWh battery storage system in Benban. “But Egypt is likely to need thousands more megawatts of additional capacity to meet demand in coming years,” AMEA Power’s Hussain Al Nowais said.

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