Egypt’s first planned plant turning municipal waste into power is stuck on EGP 0.35. Green Tech Egypt has put its Abu Rawash waste-to-power plant on hold because the current tariff pays 7 US cents plus EGP 0.35 per kWh, and the company says its lenders won’t finance a project whose revenue is split across two currencies. The regulator, however, says the rate stands and favors turning waste into cement kiln fuel instead.

“Any bank or investor will never finance a project if they find a tariff split where part is in USD and part is in EGP,” a Green Tech official tells EnterpriseAM. Even an EGP-denominated portion that small is enough to make the project unviable, the official says. “It is simply not feasible,” the official says, adding that the project’s low internal rate of return (IRR) makes full USD indexation the minimum it needs to be bankable.

What Green Tech wants: The company asked for 7.7 cents fully pegged to the USD and settled in EGP at the Central Bank of Egypt’s (CBE) rate on each monthly invoice. It also wants a 1% annual escalation to cover rising operating costs over the 25-year contract. It first sought 8.2 cents, the USD value of its original EGP 1.40 tariff when Decree 41/2019 set it, but was told 7.7 was the ceiling, the official says. The decree pegs only part of the rate: Prime Ministerial Decree 4096/2025 (pdf), published on 11 November 2025, repealed Cabinet Decree 41/2019 and capped the tariff at 7 cents plus EGP 0.35, with no annual escalation. It also caps any single plant at 20 MW, though Green Tech already holds an exception that lets Abu Rawash connect above that level to the transmission grid, the official says. The Egyptian Electricity Holding Company backs the electricity distribution companies’ 57% share of the tariff, but the decree gives the contracting authority’s 43% (Giza Governorate, in Abu Rawash’s case) no Finance Ministry backing. The final decree ran contrary to what Green Tech had requested, the official says. Of the 92 companies that answered the government’s 2020 call for interest in the waste-to-power projects, only nine remained interested, the official adds.

Why the peg matters: Foreign lenders charge 6-7% on USD loans, while Egyptian banks charge 21-23% on EGP debt, a big gap on a USD 140 mn project, the official says. Projects earning revenue in EGP must also borrow in EGP under CBE rules, which is why Green Tech’s financial adviser has made full USD indexation a prerequisite for financing, the official explains.

Abu Rawash, by the numbers: The company puts the plant at 1.5k tons of municipal waste a day and 35-36 MW gross, with 3-4 MW used on site and 32-33 MW exported round the clock across some 8.2k hours a year. Each ton of waste yields 0.4-0.6 MWh, and roughly USD 5 mn has already gone to designs, site prep, and consultants, the official says. The plant was set at 1.2k tons and 30 MWh as recently as August 2024, according to a Military Production Ministry statement.

Green Tech’s case to the state is a fuel bill. Imported gas at USD 14 / MMBtu puts the cost of gas-fired generation at around 14 US cents per kWh, against the 7.7 cents Green Tech is asking, the official says. The plant would run as baseload, displacing gas-fired generation one for one, he adds. The obstacle, the official argues, is that the ministry paying the tariff isn’t the one paying for fuel: “The Electricity Ministry does not pay the natural gas bill; the Finance Ministry does.” The savings the project generates, he says, sit with neither the body that would pay the tariff nor the one asking for the power. The rate stands, and no further revision is under discussion, Waste Management Regulatory Authority (WMRA) CEO Yasser Abdallah says. “If I have EGP 100, and one technology costs me EGP 100, and another technology costs EGP 1k, I’ll work with what’s available,” he tells us. Mechanical biological treatment, which produces refuse-derived fuel (RDF), compost, and recyclables, delivers more at lower cost, he adds, pointing to how Saudi Arabia holds back from waste-to-power on the same economics. Egypt’s advantage is its cement plants, which take processed waste as fuel and pay the state for it, he says. Power plants, in his view, suit areas where existing waste facilities are already full or places where transport costs are prohibitive. The fuel route has a record behind it: Egypt now has 38 municipal waste recycling plants handling around half of the country’s generated waste, up from under 12% before 2022, Abdallah says, with close to 1 mn tons a year of RDF replacing coal in cement plants. He sets Abu Rawash against the national picture of 10-12 mn tons of waste recycled a year.

The reject rate is Green Tech’s counter. Sorting and RDF plants send around 60% of incoming waste to landfill, against roughly 5% as bottom ash at Abu Rawash, the official says. WHAT’S NEXT- Green Tech has asked the Cabinet to amend the tariff or exempt its project, the official says. “If our requests are approved, we are ready to proceed immediately,” he tells us.

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