Cairo, Dec 01 (IPS) – As Europe braces for an uncommon winter as a result of a world vitality disaster, Greece is embarking on one in all Europe’s most bold vitality initiatives by connecting its electrical energy grid to Egypt’s.
An underwater cable will transport 3,000 MW of electrical energy to energy as much as 450,000 households from northern Egypt to Attica in Greece.
In October, the 2 international locations agreed to assemble the Mediterranean’s first undersea cable to move electrical energy generated by photo voltaic and wind vitality in North Africa to Europe. The mission’s complete size is 1373 kilometres.
The Copelouzos Group is in control of the mission, and its executives met with Egyptian leaders in October to hurry up the method.
The settlement comes at a time when Greece, Cyprus, and Israel wish to make investments $900 million in establishing a line connecting Europe and Asia that would be the longest and deepest vitality cable throughout the Mediterranean.
At a ceremony in Athens, Greek Power Minister Costas Skrickas and his Egyptian counterpart Mohamed Shaker signed a memorandum of understanding on the mission.
“This connection advantages Greece, Egypt, and the European Union,” Skrickas stated.
He defined that the mission would assist to construct an vitality hub within the japanese Mediterranean and enhance the area’s vitality safety.
In addition to boosting the share of renewable vitality sources within the vitality combine and reducing greenhouse fuel emissions within the vitality sector, the mission is anticipated to allow the export of renewable vitality from Egypt to Greece in intervals of excessive renewable vitality technology and vice versa.
In accordance with Dr Ayman Hamza, spokesman for the Ministry of Electrical energy, the Egyptian-Greek electrical connectivity mission has important technical, financial, environmental, and social advantages. The mission goals to ascertain a sturdy interconnection community within the Jap Mediterranean to extend the safety and dependability of vitality provides, in addition to to help within the occasion of transmission community breakdowns, interruptions, and emergencies, and to boost the extent of safety {of electrical} provides.
The mission, scheduled to start out in 2028, is a significant factor of the 2 nations’ ongoing strategic relations and cooperation. It’ll pace up the event of the vitality hall by growing the availability of electrical energy to Egypt and Greece whereas balancing vitality demand, encouraging responses to the challenges of local weather change, and decreasing emissions, all of which is able to contribute to the hall’s continued development, Hamza informed IPS.
“Now we have 16 memorandums of understanding associated to inexperienced hydrogen,” he defined, including that “there’s a nice demand from traders to put money into renewable vitality, whether or not the solar or wind.”
“On the margins of the COP27 local weather convention, it’s anticipated that extraordinarily main agreements on the extent of inexperienced hydrogen and others, with nice expertise, might be signed,” Hamza elaborated.
The potential of Egypt growing its reliance on renewable vitality, he continued, is made attainable by a lot of traders pouring cash into photo voltaic and wind vitality. He said that Egypt would turn out to be a regional renewable vitality hub.
Egypt has electrical interconnection strains with Libya and Sudan, and we’re collaborating with different African organizations to take important steps to attach Africa and Europe by way of electrical interconnection. As a result of Africa is a significant vitality supply, it will profit each continents, the spokesperson continued.
In accordance with Dr Farouk Al-Hakim, Secretary-Normal of the Egyptian Society of Electrical Engineers, Egypt’s export of electrical energy signifies a surplus, which generates a major financial return, strengthens Egypt’s political place, and transforms Egypt right into a regional vitality hub, along with the quite a few job alternatives created in operation and upkeep.
Al-Hakim informed IPS that Egypt has a major surplus because of the set up of three monumental energy stations previously a number of years within the administrative capital, Burullus, and Beni Suef, in addition to photo voltaic crops, together with the Benban facility, which is the most important in Africa and the Center East.
{The electrical} connection at the moment gives many advantages, he continued, significantly provided that Europe, like most different nations worldwide, is experiencing an vitality disaster because of the Russian-Ukrainian battle. Subsequently, it’s a good suggestion to start out with two nations which have shared a historical past with Egypt, comparable to Greece and Cyprus, he added.
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© Inter Press Service (2022) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service
