Egypt is continuing its energy transition. Significant progress in this area is being made thanks to Independent Power Producers (IPPs) who are investing heavily. This is the case of Amea Power, which has just reached a new stage in the development of its Amunet wind power project in Ras Ghareb, 318 km south of Cairo. The Emirati company has just installed the very first wind turbine in the field, which will house 70 over the coming months. The aim is to deliver 500 MW of power.
To achieve this, Amea Power has enlisted the services of a consortium made up of the Chinese companies Huadong PowerChina Engineering Corporation and PowerChina for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) of the Amunet wind farm. The field is equipped by Chinese supplier Envision Energy, which is installing its EN-171 wind turbines, each with a capacity of 6.5 MW.
An investment of $709 million
The wind farm’s output will be fed into the Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company (EETC) grid under a 25-year power purchase agreement (PPA). According to Amea Power, the facility will be capable of producing 2,300,000 MWh of electricity per year, enough to power at least 800,000 Egyptian households while offsetting 1,000,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions.
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This clean energy project will require an investment of $709 million, 80% of which will be financed by debt granted by international financial institutions, such as the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a subsidiary of the World Bank Group, which is contributing $95 million. The debt is also financed by commercial banks. This is a high-impact project in the Egyptian energy sector, but one that is likely to have an impact on wildlife.
Impact on biodiversity
Although built in an area considered to be “barren and of low ecological importance and sensitivity”, the wind farm is located on the Red Sea/Rift Valley flyway for birds, which links breeding areas in Europe with wintering grounds. To reduce the risk of collisions, the environmental impact study commissioned by Amea Power and its Japanese partner Sumitomo Corporation identified two avenues: shutdown on demand as part of the Active Turbine Management Programme favoured by other IPPs active in the Gulf of Suez, and the installation of bird flight diverters on all the project’s transmission lines.
In any case, the implementation of a collision mitigation mechanism is more than necessary to protect the 1.5 million migratory birds of 37 species that use the Red Sea/Rift Valley flyway every year.
Jean Marie Takouleu