Egypt has put forward an ambitious bid for investments in a list of African climate projects ready to be matched with international funding, that will be showcased at the COP27 climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh.
Along with UN regional commissioners and high-level climate champions, the Egyptian COP27 presidency organised five regional roundtables with financiers to match bankable carbon-cutting and adaptation projects with funders.
This includes the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, a coalition of financial institutions committed to accelerating the decarbonisation of the economy. The first of these meetings took place at the UN Economic Commission for Africa in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, this week.
Among a pool of more than 140 projects being considered, an initial list of 19 African projects was showcased as examples of projects which are ready to be implemented and scaled up, and could receive funding with more projects expected to make it onto the list in the coming months.
Egypt has four projects in the works with an estimated cost of around $17.4 billion which take up 40% of the combined cost of all the projects on the list. Having already secured a portion of the funding, it is asking for $11.4 billion in new investments.
Egypt is pitching for $10bn – the highest cost of any project on the initial list – to replace 17 inefficient fossil fuel power plants, which have a combined capacity of 7.5GW, with 11.3GW of wind and solar power.
The project, which is to be delivered by the private sector, would help Egypt meet its 2030 emissions reduction goal.
Egypt is further pitching for investments for two adaptation projects, an $800 million project to increase the resilience of crop production in the Nile valley and delta, and $600 million to build six desalination plants powered by solar energy to reduce dependence on freshwater supplies from the Nile.
Faten Aggad, a senior advisor on climate diplomacy and geopolitics for the African Climate Foundation, told Climate Home that the initiative demonstrated that a pipeline of ready-to-be-funded climate projects exists.
“The challenge remains in matching it with funding, especially in the case of adaptation finance,” said Aggad. “This will require major action backed by public funding to de-risk investments in order to reassure and attract investments, that is the weak link”.
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