Maya Hennerkes, the Director of Green Finance Systems at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), recently spoke about Egypt's potential as an attractive market for the bank. She confirmed that Egypt is on the right track when it comes to achieving green, clean, and sustainable energy goals.
Hennerkes praised the achievements of the "Noubar" platform, which represents a national program for obtaining easy financing for climate change adaptation and mitigation issues. She stated that "the EBRD supports the energy sector of the Noubar platform, the link between water, food, and energy, with Egyptian partners and donor countries, and we strongly focus on the transition in this sector." She also commended Egypt's decision to decommission some of its old power plants that consumed a lot of fossil fuels and replace them with renewable energy sources, making it a promising country capable of successfully implementing this transition.
The EBRD has pledged to provide €1.3 billion for financing the transition to green and renewable energy projects in Egypt over the next five years. The bank's Executive Director for the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean region, Heike Harmgart, had previously stated that the bank is Egypt's primary partner for the energy sector of the Noubar platform.
When it comes to the bank's role in helping Africa, which suffers the most from the effects of climate change despite contributing the least to the emissions causing global warming, Hennerkes said that "we want to support the green transition and renewable energy, and so we always look to finance green and renewable energy, and what we can do is establish projects such as solar and wind power stations, and everything that can help African countries generate clean energy and achieve a green transition, and not rely on imports. We are working towards sustainability and supporting success stories in this regard."
Regarding the bank's strategy for supporting the green transition in its operations until 2025, Hennerkes said that "we follow an annual plan based on the decision of the shareholders, but the bank has announced allocating 50% of its financing to all operation countries for green and sustainable transition annually."
When asked about the feasibility of the goal to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, which was adopted by the Paris climate conference in 2015, Hennerkes said that "I believe we must work to make this goal realistic, and so we must focus on decarbonizing industries with high emissions, targeting the reduction of fossil fuel use, and adopting all technologies that can be part of the solution to completely remove carbon from the atmosphere, such as the carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology or carbon sequestration through afforestation and changing farming methods that trap carbon in the soil, thereby reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere."
She added that "we have not yet reached our goal, but there is no alternative to moving forward and turning this dream into a reality through mixed financing to invest in more innovative technologies to reduce emissions. The commercial sector shows some reluctance to invest in these projects, and the gains are not attractive enough compared to the risks involved, among other factors."
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