Egypt's energy system transition towards 100% renewable energy by 2050, with a spotlight on e-fuels/e-chemicals exports and carbon dioxide removal services

Abstract

The Paris Agreement targets to halt the progression and ramifications of climate change necessitate global cooperation and renewable energy uptake in both developed and developing countries at similar rates. The first chapter of this thesis explores the energy transition pathway options for Egypt across the power, heat, transport, and desalination sectors as a representative case study for other emerging sunbelt economies. The LUT Energy System Transition Model has been used to investigate the feasibility and viability of six scenarios, including four variations of a best policy, a delayed policy, and the current policy. The least-cost solution, which achieves 100% renewable energy and zero CO₂ emissions by 2050, is dominated by solar photovoltaics at 90% of the total primary energy demand and complemented by wind power, hydropower, and bioenergy. The key transition enablers are the excellent and low-cost solar resources, energy storage, and sector coupling technologies allowing high electrification and full sector coupling. The results reveal that the current and delayed policy scenarios are the most expensive pathways highlighting the value of leapfrogging into a fully renewable system. This calls for regulatory and policy reforms that balance investment risks in emerging economies and enable the financial mobilisation of such a transition. The structural results of the first chapter provide a reliable guide for energy transition planning in Egypt as well as other emerging sunbelt economies.

The transition to 100% renewable energy necessary to mitigate climate change requires solutions for hard-to-abate energy sectors. It must also be complemented with negative emissions technologies to ensure climate security given the current transition pace and the revisions to remaining carbon budgets. The second chapter of this thesis investigates how the provision of carbon dioxide removal services, and e-fuels and e-chemicals exports can affect the techno-economic performance of the exporting country’s energy system. Egypt is used as a representative case study for sunbelt countries with adequate land area. Four scenarios have been investigated using the LUT Energy System Transition Model and compared to the country’s reference 100% domestic renewable energy system. The results show that Egypt can technically provide 5% of the required global carbon dioxide removal capacity starting from 2035, and 10% of Europe’s demand for e-fuels and e-chemicals starting from 2025 within land-use constraints. The provision of such services achieves cost savings across several cost metrics which further enhances the experience for the domestic energy system users. The highest cost savings are achieved when providing both carbon dioxide removal services and e-fuels/e-chemicals exports, with two comparable feasible system configurations. One relies mostly on concentrated solar thermal power coupled with thermal energy storage while the other relies mostly on a hybrid solar photovoltaic and wind power system combined with battery storage and heat pumps. Given the right regulatory frameworks and financing structures, Egypt has the energy and land resources required for an even greater potential than the one assumed in this thesis.