Egypt earmarks more land for wind farms

Egypt has allocated land for three wind farms along the course of the Nile river in Upper Egypt.

Egypt has set aside 630,000 hectares of government land in Beni Suef, Minya and Assiut to build wind farms, in addition to the 300,000 hectares it allocated in June.

"Part of this land will be used for future tenders that we will announce for building wind farms, and the other part will be for wind farms funded by the government and multinational organisations," said an unnamed official at Egypt’s Electricity Ministry, according to Reuters.

A plan to build a new 250MW wind farm on the country’s Red Sea coast has attracted interest from 72 international firms.

From the renewables perspective, the Egyptian government has a plan to generate 500MW of solar power, 600MW of wind power and 600MW of new hydroelectric power by 2017, according to industry forecaster Business Monitor International (BMI).

BMI predicts that non-hydro renewables will account for 0.8% of Egypt’s electricity generation by 2013.

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