EBRD to finance Egypt transition from gas to wind power

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) will provide $300 million to finance the decommissioning of 5GW of inefficient gas-fired power plants in Egypt from 2023, said its regional managing director on Sunday.

Heike Harmgart, EBRD’s managing director for the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean, told Reuters that the money raised in sovereign financing would be spent on stabilising the country’s electricity grid, adding battery storage, upgrading local supply chains for renewables, and retraining workers.

This is part of the EBRD’s $1.3 billion funding pledge announced by the bank’s president Odile Renaud-Basso at the Egypt-International Cooperation Forum (Egypt-ICF), which includes a separate $1 billion in financing for renewable energy projects. This would account for around one tenth of the private funding Egypt needs to add 10 GW of renewables capacity by 2028, Harmgart added.

Egypt, a key natural gas producer, is trying to cut down on domestic consumption so that it can export more to Europe at a time of increasing energy and electricity prices and demand resulting from the Russian war in Ukraine. It has a power surplus after the installation of three huge gas-fired power plants built by Siemens from 2015.