Abu Dhabi, UAE – Masdar, the UAE’s flagship clean energy company, and its consortium partners, Infinity Power Holding and Hassan Allam Utilities, announced on Wednesday that they have signed a framework agreement with leading Egyptian state-backed organisations on the development of a 2 gigawatt (GW) green hydrogen project in the Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCZONE).
The agreement was inked on the sidelines of the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Sharm el Sheikh.
Earlier in April, the consortium signed two Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) with Egyptian entities to develop two green hydrogen production plants in the country, one in the SCZONE and another on the Mediterranean. They are targeting an electrolyzer capacity of 4 gigawatts (GW) by 2030 and an output of up to 480,000 tonnes of green hydrogen per year.
“This 4 GW green hydrogen program follows Masdar’s announcement last week of a 10-gigawatt wind project in Egypt, also with our partners Hassan Allam Utilities and Infinity Power Holding – both will support Egypt’s decarbonisation objectives,”the UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology and the country’s Special Envoy for Climate Dr. Sultan Al Jaber said. “Through Egypt’s hosting of COP27, our two countries have also been able to exchange expertise and share insights that we will take forward and build on in the UAE when we host COP28 next year.”
In the first phase of the project, the consortium will establish a green hydrogen manufacturing facility in the SCZONE, scheduled to begin operations by 2026. The electrolyzer facilities in the SCZONE and on the Mediterranean could be extended to up to 4 GW by 2030 to produce 2.3 million tonnes of green ammonia for export as well as supply green hydrogen for local industries.
Egypt enjoys abundant solar and wind resources that can allow for the generation of renewable power at a highly competitive cost, a key enabler for green hydrogen production.
Egypt is targeting renewables to make up 42 percent of its energy mix by 2035, while Egyptian authorities are reportedly working to revise the country’s renewable energy strategy to include green hydrogen.
Africa could capture as much as 10 percent of the global green hydrogen market, helping to create up to 3.7 million jobs and adding as much as US$120 billion to the continent’s gross domestic product (GDP), according to a report issued jointly by Masdar and its Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week (ADSW) platform at COP27 last week.