Abu Dhabi’s renewable energy company Masdar and its Cairo-based partner Hassan Allam Utilities, have secured Egypt’s support to develop green hydrogen hubs on the Red Sea and the Mediterranean coasts of the country, targeting up to 4 GW of electrolysers by 2030, according to Kemicalinfo.
The partners signed two memoranda of understanding (MoUs) with the New and Renewable Energy Authority (NREA), the Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company (EETC), The Sovereign Fund of Egypt, and The General Authority for Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCZONE) to cooperate on the project development, Masdar announced on Sunday.
Masdar and Hassan Allam Utilities expect to develop the project in stages. In the first phase, they plan to build a green hydrogen production plant to produce 100,000 tonnes of e-methanol per year for bunkering in the Suez Canal.
That plant would be operational by 2026.
In the following stages, the electrolysis capacity in the Suez Canal Economic Zone and on the Mediterranean could be expanded to up to 4 GW by 2030 to produce 2.3 million tonnes of green ammonia for exports, and to supply green hydrogen to local industries.
The latest agreements come as the government of Egypt prepares to revise its 2030 renewable energy strategy to include green hydrogen. The nation’s green hydrogen strategy is currently in development and is expected to be released by October 2022, according to Masdar.
As MRC informed before, in September 2021, bp, ADNOC and Masdar signed three agreements with the potential to lead to billions of dollars of investment into clean and low carbon energy, creating potentially thousands of energy jobs.
The first agreement would see the companies collaborate to initially develop 2GW of low carbon hydrogen across hubs in the UK and UAE, with the intention to expand as the project progresses. Access to clean hydrogen - a critical fuel in the decarbonization of hard-to-abate industries - can reduce emissions, enable new, low carbon products, and unlock future fuels. This announcement could enable a significant contribution towards the UK Government’s target to develop 5GW of hydrogen production by 2030.
We remind that bp expects to invest around USD2 billion in low carbon energy in 2021, rising to USD3-4 billion in 2025 and aiming for around USD5 billion in 2030.
MRC