Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Egypt is perfect for solar power, even though the country has not implemented much of it yet. The Egyptians had installed 1.8 gigawatts of solar by the beginning of this year, most of it at the Benban Solar Park some 400 miles south of Cairo in the Aswan Governorate.
But the potential is vast. In mid-December, Egypt just inaugurated another big solar facility, with a nameplate capacity of 500 megawatts (0.5 gigawatts). The new installation was built in just 18 months, and is intended to deal with increasing electricity outages, what Americans call “brown-outs,” which are driven in part by increased use of air conditioning in the ever more torrid summers.
This problem is widespread — burning gas to produce energy causes rising temperatures, which people deal with by using more air conditioning, which burns more gas, and so on. Turkey faces the same problem, but has dealt with it much more aggressively, achieving nearly 19 gigawatts of solar to power the extra air conditioning.
In addition, Egypt Today reports that someone has finally figured out that the relatively educated and relatively inexpensive Egyptian labor force is well placed to manufacture solar panels in-country, which would much reduce their price — not only for Egypt but for other markets like Africa.
Sweden’s Sunshine Pro is partnering with Egyptian institutions to establish a solar panel manufacturing facility. Egypt has something like 33 million workers. About 28% work in industry, and 74% of adults are literate.
“Amon-Ra,” Digital, Midjourney, 2024
Egypt Today writes that the project entails establishing the Arab-Swedish Energy Factory (ASEF), an automated facility for producing solar panels with an annual capacity of 1 GW. The project aims to strengthen domestic manufacturing potential, minimize reliance on imports, draw international investments, and enhance the private sector’s contribution to sustainable progress.
I have explained in the past why Egypt is so suited for solar power. The brown stretches in the map below are pure desert where there just is nothing at all except occasionally lizards and scorpions. No one will be inconvenienced by solar farms in those tens of thousands of square miles. Egypt is 387,050 sq mi., or about 1 million sq. km., and only 3 percent of it is suitable to farming.
h/t Wikimedia
Most people live along the Nile on a north-south axis, so the electrical wiring is pretty straightforward, though they need new grid connections and some high density wires. This is what the population density looks like:
h/t Wikimedia.
The country’s grid currently produces on the order of 60 gigawatts and most of it is fossil gas. Egypt is the world’s 20th largest producer of natural gas, but it also imports about 8% of what it uses — from Israel, to the tune of almost $1 billion a year. Replacing the imported fossil gas with solar should be a high priority, since it would save money and contribute to national security.
Egypt has adopted new green energy goals, saying that it wants 42% of its grid to be renewable energy by 2030, and 60% by 2040. These targets are woefully inadequate — all countries need to be at 100% green energy by 2050 if we are to avoid a chaotic and challenging climate.
It is bizarre that Egypt has so little solar power as yet. It is currently in the same ballpark for installed solar capacity as Morocco, which has an economy only about a third as large as Egypt’s. Subsidized and imported natural gas are way more expensive to the government than solar, even accounting for the latter’s start-up coasts. But, it seems that this dismal record is likely to improve over the next decade, despite governmental foot-dragging.
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