EBRD signs $623M renewable energy agreements in Egypt

CAIRO – 21 August 2017: The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) signed a number of agreements in the Egyptian renewable energy sector on Monday, worth a total of $623 million.

Financing the Egyptian government’s Sustainable Energy Strategy, the first agreement was signed with South Korea-based Green Climate Fund (GCF), a Monday statement from the EBRD stated.

Under that agreement, the EBRD is contributing $352.3 million, while GCF is making a contribution of $154.7 million.

Funding packages from other donors and sponsors will push the project’s fund to $1 billion, to transform Egypt’s energy resources so that they generate 20 percent of the country’s energy into renewable energy projects by 2022.

The second agreement was signed with France-based Proparco worth $116 million. The plan is to finance the construction of two 50MW solar plant in the Benban solar complex in Aswan.

The two power plants are considered the first two projects to be financed under the second round of the government’s feed-in-tariff (FiT) scheme, planned at an estimated capacity of 1.8GW.

The EBRD is also expected to finance a total of 16 solar projects in Egypt at a total capacity of 750MW. They pledged $500 million in funding framework for the FiT project.

“We are very pleased to sign the first projects today, just two months after the EBRD Board of Directors approved our Egypt Renewable Energy Framework. These are truly groundbreaking projects, the first to reach this milestone in Egypt’s ambitious scheme to exploit its outstanding renewable resources,” EBRD Managing Director of the Southern and Eastern and Mediterranean (SEMED) region Janet Heckman said in the statement.

The EBRD have been active in Egypt since 2012, and has funded a total of €2.6 billion ($3 billion) in 43 projects in the sectors of finance, agribusiness, manufacturing, services and infrastructure projects.