As Egypt plans to bring its first solar power unit online in 2010, the North Africa country has announced that it will house a factory producing raw materials and gas to generate solar energy run by a Dutch company (2010 Start-up for Egypt’s First Solar Power Unit).
The new plant, with $460 million of investments in total, is expected to produce annually 3,000 tons of polysilicon to produce solar cells, and 1,500 tons of gas to manufacture the cells. According to a MENA report, officials said Egypt’s combined oil and gas reserves will last the most populous Arab country roughly three decades, encouraging a shift to alternative energy sources, including wind, solar, and nuclear.
However, Egypt has a major problem: the country currently faces a natural gas growth rate estimated at about 8% annually with locally produced natural gas only coming in at 6% annually. This has led to the government studying ways to import Iraqi gas to meet domestic demand. According to the CIA World Factbook, the country is sitting on anywhere from 58.5 Tcf to 70 Tcf or more of natural gas reserves. Egypt has placed on hold all export sales on its gas in an effort to meet domestic demand. New trains for the country’s LNG projects at Damietta and Idku have been halted despite the number of gas discoveries being made. EGAS said in October that plans for a second LNG train at Damietta had been postponed until enough gas reserves were found.
While many argue that solar energy is still relatively expensive – especially for a country like Egypt with a high poverty rate – can the country benefit from the possibility of importing gas from Iraq in order to power a solar energy plant (among other projects like the scheduled LNG trains)? In addition, would the solar energy produced at the proposed factory be enough to meet local demand for basics such as cooking and create energy independence from conventional methods such as natural gas?
Government officials acknowledge the country’s huge solar potential, and yet Egypt still utilizes less than 1% of energy generated from solar power.
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