Egypt aims to produce 2600 MW of wind power in 2011

He noted that the ministry had already raised funds for several wind farm plants, each with a capacity of 540 megawatts, in the Gulf of Suez. Fund-raising for the wind turbines projects, he said, had been done in cooperation with the German Development Bank, the European Investment Bank, the EU, and the governments of Japan and Spain.

The minister went on to say that fund-raising was currently underway for additional wind farn plants, each with a capacity of 580 megawatts, in cooperation with the Spanish government, the German Development Bank, Abu Dhabi and the French Development Agency, while negotiations were still being held with Japan to finance another station west of the Nile with a capacity of 200 megawatts.

“And there’s another plan for the Egyptian private sector to build a wind farm plant with a 1370-megawatt capacity on a build-operate-transfer (BOT) basis,” Younes noted.

“Wind power is a priority for us in order to diversify our available sources of energy,” he said, adding that the ministry hoped to produce an annual total of 7200 megawatts of wind energy by 2020.

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