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By Trend

COP27 host Egypt is close to signing final agreements to build two wind and solar projects with combined capacity of a gigawatt (GW) to boost the country’s lagging renewable power development, Trend reports citing Al Arabiya.

High levels of solar irradiation, strong winds and expanses of desert in which to construct plants mean Egypt has vast renewable potential, industry players say.

The government has brought forward a goal of producing 42 percent of its power generation from renewables to 2030 from 2035, but missed a target of 20 percent for this year.

The two new projects, with a combined cost of over $1 billion, are both backed by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), which approved them at board level last week, Vivek Pathak, IFC’s head of climate business, said.

They are under negotiation and should be finalized soon, though the exact date was unclear, he said in an interview on the sidelines of COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh.

One is for a 500 megawatt (MW) solar plant near the southern Egyptian city of Aswan, an area already home to one of the world’s largest solar parks, to be developed by Dubai-based AMEA Power, according to a disclosure on the IFC website.

The other is a 500MW wind plant to be built by a consortium owned by AMEA Power and Japan’s Sumitomo Corporation near Ras Ghareb on the Red Sea coast of the Gulf of Suez.

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