CAIRO: Egypt wants to accelerate the provision of renewable energy that could ease electricity shortages and supply green power to Europe, but faces challenges in funding updates to its grid and unlocking investments for new wind and solar plants.
Officials touted Egypt’s potential in wind and solar power as well as green hydrogen at a two-day Egypt-EU investment conference in Cairo at the weekend, hoping to secure financing and benefit from Europe’s efforts to diversify and decarbonize its energy supplies.
“I think this industry represents the future for both sides,” Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly told the conference, adding that Egypt should manufacture renewable components such as solar panels, wind turbines and electrolyzers.
Electricity Minister Mohamed Shaker said Egypt was reviewing its clean energy targets and would aim for a 58 percent share of renewables in power generation by 2040.
He said that since 2014, Egypt had spent more than 116 billion Egyptian pounds ($2.42 billion at current exchange rates) on upgrading its transmission network, as it looked to expand into renewables.
“We are ready with the infrastructure,” said Shaker, adding that the government was offering several incentives to investors and could get approvals from President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi to raise the maximum heights for wind turbines from the ground to the tip of their blades to 220 meters from 150 meters.
Expansion of installed renewable capacity largely plateaued after the inauguration of the major Benban solar plant in 2019, according to data from Egypt’s New and Renewable Energy Authority (NREA), putting in doubt an earlier target of 42 percent of power generation through renewables by 2030.
Less than 12 percent of Egypt’s installed capacity of nearly 60GW is from renewables, the data shows.
Most power is generated by gas, and a gas shortage has contributed to daily power cuts that were extended to three hours last week, as well as causing outages at fertilizer and chemicals factories.
Egypt has signed many MoUs for renewable energy and green hydrogen development since hosting the COP 27 climate summit in 2022. It has ambitions to export electricity to regional neighbors, as well as to Europe through a subsea cable to Greece.
But analysts say Egypt needs to adapt and extend its grid to the sites of potential projects to make them viable.
“We have a shortage in fuel today which means we have the power cuts, which makes more renewables the sensible way forward ... but these need to be connected (to the grid) and this is where the challenge is,” said Hamza Assad, Southern and Eastern Mediterranean climate strategy head for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), which is helping finance Egypt’s energy transition.
When those connections, or transmission lines, might be built is unclear, partly because of a cap on public investments imposed this year to contain Egypt’s heavy debt burden, people with knowledge of the sector said. An Egyptian cabinet spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Grid development would cost billions in the longer term if major scaling up and the needs of green hydrogen is included, though needs this year would be a fraction of this, said Heike Harmgart, EBRD’s managing director for the region.
Egypt’s renewable power ambitions face grid hurdle
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Egypt’s renewable power ambitions face grid hurdle
- Officials touted Egypt’s potential in wind and solar power as well as green hydrogen at a two-day Egypt-EU investment conference
US says airstrike killed Daesh official in Syria
WASHINGTON: The US military announced Thursday that a recent airstrike had killed an Daesh group official in northwest Syria.
In a post to social media, US Central Command said its forces “conducted a precision airstrike in northwest Syria killing Rakhim Boev, a Syria-based Daesh official,” using another name for Daesh.
The post on X said Boev was “involved in planning external operations threatening US citizens, our partners, and civilians.”
The accompanying image depicts an SUV vehicle with a bashed-in windshield and roof.
AFP previously reported that two people were killed in separate drone strikes Tuesday, on a car and a motorcycle, in the northwestern bastion of the Islamist former rebels who now head the Syrian government.
A call to CENTCOM seeking confirmation that the incidents are related was not immediately returned.
The twin drone strikes in the Idlib region mirror the US-led coalition’s past strikes on jihadists in the area.
During a meeting in Riyadh last month, US President Donald Trump called on his Syrian counterpart Ahmed Al-Sharaa to help Washington prevent a resurgence by Daesh.
Returning Syrian refugees cut global displaced total
- UN believes 1.5m from abroad and 2m internally displaced will be home by the end of 2025
GENEVA: Refugees returning to Syria have cut the global total of displaced people from a record peak at the end of 2024, the UN said on Thursday.
More than 500,000 have returned from abroad and 1.2 million internally displaced people have gone back to their home areas since Bashar Assad was deposed in December. The UN refugee agency estimates 1.5 million from abroad and 2 million internally displaced will return by the end of 2025.
Worldwide, a record 123.2 million were forcibly displaced by last December, but the total had fallen to 122.1 million by the end of April. The main drivers of displacement were conflicts in Sudan, Myanmar and Ukraine.
“We are living in a time of intense volatility ... with modern warfare creating a fragile, harrowing landscape marked by acute human suffering,” UN refugee chief Filippo Grandi said. “We must redouble our efforts to search for peace and find long-lasting solutions for refugees and others forced to flee their homes.”
Syria condemns ‘blatant violation’ of sovereignty after Israeli incursion
- One person killed and 7 captured during the pre-dawn operation in Beit Jin, Interior Ministry says
DAMASCUS: Syria’s Interior Ministry condemned an Israeli incursion in southern Syria, saying Israeli forces killed one person and abducted seven others, calling it a “blatant violation” of the country’s sovereignty.
“We affirm that these repeated provocations constitute a blatant violation of the sovereignty of the Syrian Arab Republic,” the ministry said in a statement, adding that “these practices cannot lead the region to stability and will only result in further tension and turmoil.”
The Israeli military said those detained during the pre-dawn raid on Beit Jin were suspected of planning attacks against Israel, and that weapons also were found in the area.
They were taken back to Israel for questioning, the military said.
One person was killed and seven captured in the operation, Syria’s Interior Ministry said, while the father of the young man killed said he had a history of mental illness.
Since the fall of President Bashar Assad’s government in early December, Israeli forces have moved into several areas in southern Syria and conducted hundreds of airstrikes throughout the country, destroying much of the assets of the Syrian army.
Local broadcaster Syria TV described Thursday’s raid as being carried out by about 100 Israeli troops who stormed Beit Jin, near the border with Lebanon, and called out the names of several people targeted for arrest through loudspeakers.
Syria’s Interior Ministry said such incursions spike tensions in the region.
“Such repeated provocative acts are a flagrant violation of Syria’s sovereignty,” the ministry said in a statement.
Village official Walid Okasha said that Israeli troops had entered the outskirts of Beit Jin in recent months, but that this was the first time they entered the center of the village.
He added that Thursday’s operation came four days after an Israeli drone strike hit a car in the village, inflicting casualties.
“They came targeting specific people,” said Okasha, who denied that Hamas members were in the village.
He said the seven people taken to Israel were all Syrians and that two of them were members of the country’s new security forces.
He said the man who was killed suffered from mental illness.
Ahmad Hammadi identified the victim as his son and told the AP that he had a history of schizophrenia.
He said his son was shot dead in front of his home, and that he had no links to Hamas.
He said two of the captured men were his nephews. Hussein Safadi said his two sons, Ahmad, 32, and Mohammed, 34, were captured, adding that his younger son, who raises goats, had lived in Lebanon for years until recently.
He said his younger son was a member of the armed opposition against Assad and recently joined the security forces of the new authorities. As for why Israeli forces seized his sons, “we don’t know the reasons,” Safadi said.
During a visit to France last month, Syrian President Ahmad Al-Sharaa said that his country is holding indirect talks with Israel to prevent hostilities from getting out of control.
Egypt blocks activists aiming to march to Gaza to draw attention to humanitarian crisis
- Egyptian authorities and activists both said Thursday that people planning to march across the Sinai Peninsula were deported
RABAT: Egypt blocked activists planning to take part in a march to Gaza, halting their attempt to reach the border and challenge Israel’s blockade on humanitarian aid to the Palestinian territory before it could begin.
Egyptian authorities and activists both said Thursday that people planning to march across the Sinai Peninsula were deported.
To draw attention to the humanitarian crisis afflicting people in Gaza, marchers have for months planned to trek about 30 miles (about 50 kilometers) from the city of Arish to Egypt’s border with the enclave on Sunday to “create international moral and media pressure” to open the crossing at Rafah and lift a blockade that has prevented aid from entering.
Saif Abu Keshek, one of the activists organizing the march, said that about 200 activists — mostly Algerians and Moroccans — were detained or deported.
But those arriving to the Cairo International Airport on Thursday afternoon were allowed into Egypt, the Spain-based activist added. Organizers have not received approval from Egyptian authorities for Sunday’s march and were evaluating how to proceed, he said.
An Egyptian official on Thursday said more than three dozen activists, mostly carrying European passports, were deported upon their arrival at the Cairo International Airport in the past two days.
The official said the activists aimed to travel to Northern Sinai “without obtaining required authorizations.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.
