The groundbreaking ceremony for a new 500MW Build-Own-Operate (BOO) Wind Farm near Ras Ghareb, Egypt was held by Red Sea Wind Energy in-conjunction with the Egyptian Ministry of Electricity and Renewable Energy.

Red Sea Wind Energy is a consortium comprising ENGIE (35%), Orascom Construction PLC (25%), Toyota Tsusho Corporation (20%), Eurus Energy Holdings Corporation (20%).

By leveraging the wind resources in the Gulf of Suez area, with 360 days of wind per year, the project will significantly support Egypt’s decarbonisation efforts, a statement from ENGIE explained.

In August 2022, South Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power won a $2.2bn contract from Russia’s Rosatom to build a nuclear energy plant in Egypt.

Overall, the Gulf of Suez 2 wind farm will contribute to Egypt’s renewable power generation goals of having 42% electricity produced from renewable sources by 2030, and will reduce CO2 emissions by approximately 1,000,000 tons annually.

Located on the shores of the Gulf of Suez, 40km North-West of Ras Ghareb, the Gulf of Suez Project 2 will be the largest onshore wind power plant in ENGIE’s portfolio. The project meets strict environmental standards and supports Egypt’s transition to renewable energy, the company confirmed.

Once fully operational, the plant will be the largest privately developed utility-scale wind power plant in Egypt, capable of delivering clean power to more than 800,000 Egyptian homes, it stated.

Late in October 2022, Orascom Construction said it had added $670mn to its backlog in Q3 2022.

The 500MW wind farm project is said to build on the past success achieved by the consortium in developing Gulf of Suez 1 – Ras Ghareb Wind Farm (262.5MW). The project was Egypt’s first renewable energy Independent Power Producer (IPP) project, and tripled the developer consortium’s wind energy capacity in Egypt to 762.5MW. That project was said to have been completed ahead of schedule in October 2019).

The new 500MW project is said to have been negotiated on a bilateral basis with the Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company (EETC) as the off taker, using the same consortium as in Gulf of Suez 1.

In November 2022, JLL issued a whitepaper that outlined ways to decarbonise Egypt’s built environment.