New EGP 550 Million Solar Project Will Power Assiut Oil Refinery

The Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources announced that they are launching a new project to increase the country’s production of solar energy. This project, worth EGP 550 million, will see a new installation of solar panels at the Assiut oil refinery. These solar power cells will have a 10-megawatt capacity and are scheduled to be completed in the next 11 months. The ministry is also working on a similar solar panel project worth EGP 500 million in collaboration with the General Petroleum Company in Cairo.

Both of these projects are made possible by grants provided by the European Union’s Energy Policy Reform programme, and will help meet the increasing energy needs of Egyptian households and industry.

Although these projects are the Egyptian government’s latest forays into solar power, they are not its first. The government has been pursuing partnerships and investments in clean energy since 2014, and has implemented multiple solar projects across the country in the last decade, including Benban Solar Park in Aswan, which is one of the largest solar parks in the world. In investing in the new solar project at the Assiut oil refinery, Egypt is taking another step towards achieving its goal of obtaining 42% of its electricity through renewable sources by 2035.