Egypt is preparing to tender for the construction of a network of desalination plants powered by renewables to address an acute shortage of fresh water and provide feedstock for green hydrogen production.

The county’s sovereign wealth fund is seeking partners to invest about $2.5bn to build, own and operate 17 desalination facilities powered by solar and other renewable resources with a combined capacity of 2.8mn m³/d by 2025.

Egypt is taking advice and technical support from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation, with the first tenders—for some 1mn m³/d—due in early 2022. 

$2.5bn – Projected cost of desalination network

Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly also recently met with executives from Norway’s Scatec Solar, the UAE’s Metito Water Treatment and local firm Orascom Construction to discuss clean desalination.

Saudi government-affiliated developer Acwa Power—which installed 120MW of the power online at Egypt’s giant Benban solar park and is developing another 200MW at nearby Kom Ombo—appears certain to play a major role. The company, the home market of which has the largest desalination capacity in the world, signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in February 2020 with Egypt’s Ministry of Housing, Utilities & Urban Communities—which is spearheading the desalination drive—and the Ministry of Electricity and Renewable Energy to conduct feasibility studies for a series of desalination projects using either solar or wind power.

Acwa is also among those setting the global pace for conventionally powered purification— winning a local project in May last year at a then-world record levelised water cost of $0.413/m³.

Green hydrogen feedstock

Egypt’s move to address its water scarcity comes as it develops a green hydrogen strategy despite its potential to produce blue hydrogen from its natural gas reserves. Until the technology is developed to directly split seawater at a viable cost, green hydrogen production in freshwater-scarce states such as Egypt will require desalination prior to electrolysis.

Germany’s Siemens last month signed an MoU with state power group Egyptian Electricity Holding Company “to jointly explore opportunities for hydrogen production and export in Egypt”, including the installation of a pilot 100-200MW electrolyser.

Separately, Germany’s Man Energy Solutions has agreed with TAQA Power to implement a pilot project producing green hydrogen for use in buses.

The North African nation’s freshwater deficit is widening and is estimated at around 110bn m³/yr. That leaves per capita supply, sourced mainly from the Nile with the addition of groundwater and delta rainfall, at barely half the World Bank’s 1,000m³/yr water poverty threshold.

The freshwater deficit is widening and is estimated at around 110bn m³/yr

Desalination is typically considered a rich-country solution to water scarcity—widely adopted by the wealthy Mid-East Gulf states but unsuited to similarly arid but cash-strapped Cairo. It is economically unviable for use in agriculture, which accounts for more than 75pc of Egypt’s water consumption due to a history of poor water management and myopic policy.

However, with energy and technology costs coming down, and given the urgency of the situation, the government has been slowly rolling out gas-powered desalination to provide potable water to coastal cities far from the Nile. Total installed capacity stands at around 830,000m³/d, and plans were announced in July 2020 to install 47 plants pumping out 2.44mn m³/yr of purified water by mid-decade, without specifying the energy source.

Egypt has a comfortable power capacity cushion following a dramatic response to a sudden shortfall that emerged at the turn of the last decade.

Only around 10pc of the country’s capacity is derived from renewables, but development of such projects has accelerated over the past two years in pursuit of a target to derive 42pc of electricity from renewables by 2035—an achievable goal given Egypt’s plentiful supplies of sun, wind and available land. The authorities are looking to use some of the additional clean power capacity to fuel the desalination ramp-up.

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Author: Clare Dunkley