The Egyptian government has signed an MOU with an Italian cement maker, Italcementi to build a wind farm on the Red sea. The project will be set up on a 11 square-km piece of land at El-Zaafarana coastal town, 200km East of Cairo, where the government will provide the land according to this agreement.
The company will build a wind power facility to generate 120 megawatts of electricity with an investment of US$200 million, a project that is part of the country’s efforts to mitigate its power shortages through renewable energy.
According to Omar Mehanna, Chairman of Italcementi’s subsidiary in Egypt, a later stage of the wind farm power project will see Italcementi building a facility to produce 200 megawatts with an investment of US$330 million.
The construction of the wind farm is expected to begin in the second quarter of 2015 and the facility will be expected to start off power production by the end of that year.
Egypt has been suffering from an acute energy crunch for almost four years, with frequent power cuts fuelling discontent against former president Mohamed Morsi that led to his eventual ouster in 2013.
The Egyptian government has been making efforts to mitigate the crisis, and in September this year, approved feed-in tariffs for renewable energy production – which will enable solar energy producers to sell electricity to the government.
The agreement was signed during President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi’s visit to Italy where he met with Italian officials, the pope and the business community. Recently, a consortium offered to construct four solar power farms in Egypt. The consortium is comprised of three local banks, two local companies and two international companies, and each of the solar power farms would have 50MW power output.
