How did Egypt adopt national strategies to reduce negative impacts of climate change?

CAIRO – 13 April 2022: The Information and Decision Support Center  (IDSC), which affiliates with the cabinet, released on Tuesday a video on the government’s efforts in reducing climate change impacts.

 

The Ministry of Environment via the Project of the Sustainable Management of Persistent Organic Pollutants succeeded in getting rid of more than 2,000 tons of high-risk stagnant and abandoned pesticides and oils contaminated with PCBs, which are listed on The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants.

 

Egypt was one of the first signatories to this convention, confirming its commitment to international conventions.

 

Egypt is one of the first countries that adopted strategies to reduce negative impact of climate change as it is currently preparing to host the COP 27 global climate summit in Sharm El-Sheikh this year.

 

The country has allocated about 8,000 km2 of unused land for renewable energy projects, and it has the largest electrical capacities of wind and solar energy in the region.

 

Since 2016, the government has worked on delivering natural gas to about 13 million housing units. It also has converted more than 420,000 cars to be operated by compressed natural gas. The natural gas is currently used in about 90 percent of power plants as the government targets generating 42 percent of the electricity from the renewable energy by 2030.

 

On April 10, 2022, Prime Minister Mustafa Mabdouli announced the government has allocated areas for producing green hydrogen in Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCZone).

 

In October 2021, Egypt’s Sovereign Fund, the Norwegian company “Scatec” for renewable energy, and the Fertiglobe company, a merger of OCI N.V. and UAE's "ADNOC” signed an agreement to produce green hydrogen in quantities ranging from 50-100 megawatts, as a feedstock for the production of green ammonia.

 

Under the agreement, the Norwegian company Scatec will build and operate a green hydrogen production facility with quantities ranging from 50 to 100 megawatts.

 

The government is working on enhancing Egypt's rank on the Climate Change Performance Index to attract more investments and acquire more climate funding.   

 

Egypt will present the issue of plastic and waste in general in COP27, which will be held in Sharm el-Sheikh at the end of 2022.