In Egypt, the building sector (direct emissions) accounted for 5% of total emissions in 2019. These emissions have increased by 74% from 1990 to 2019 due to growing energy demand; however, emissions intensity has declined by 42% over the same period due to the increasing share of electrified buildings. Fossil fuel use in the building sector, primarily from oils and e-fuels (26% in 2019) and natural gas (17%), has increased in absolute terms, but was overtaken by electricity in 2005 as the main source of energy for buildings.

All of the analysed pathways show an immediate decline in building sector emissions. Full decarbonisation of the sector is reached between 2038 and 2045. Globally all buildings should be fully decarbonised by 2050.¹⁵

Declining direct emissions in the analysed pathways are driven by increasing electrification of the building sector from just over half of building sector energy in 2019 to 72-74% by 2030 and 94-95% by 2050, for the most ambitious scenarios.¹⁴ Increased electrification will drive decarbonisation of the sector only through decarbonisation of the power sector (see power sector) Fossils fuels needs to be phased out as early as 2035 to 2040, to align with a 1.5°C pathway. The only scenario that does not see a significant phase down of fossil fuels by 2060 assumes a high reliance on CDR approaches, likely due to high up-front investments costs and not yet proven at scale.

Decarbonising the building sector will require significant efforts to electrify the sector, as energy demand is expected to grow, which will need to be supported by policies to develop and improve current grid infrastructure. Egypt has adopted mandatory energy efficiency codes for buildings; however, the government enforcement mechanisms have not been effective in getting these implemented.

¹ Ministry of Environment. Egypt’s First Biennial Update Report to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. (2018).

² Meighan, B. Egypt’s Natural Gas Crisis. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. (2016).

³ IMF. World Economic Outlook Update: April 2021. (2021).

⁴ Fahmy, H. Will the lights stay on in Egypt? Middle East Institute. (2020).

⁵ European Commission. New era in EU-Egypt energy cooperation. (2018).

⁶ Magdy, M. Egypt in Talks Over Plan to Sell Power to Europe and Africa. Bloomberg Quint. (2020).

⁷ Arab Republic of Egypt. Sustainable Development Strategy: Egypt Vision 2030. (2016).

⁸ IRENA. Renewable Energy Outlook Egypt: Executive Summary. (2018).

⁹ New and Renewable Energy Authority. Renewable Energy Targets.-

¹⁰ Global Energy Monitor. Map. Global Coal Plant Tracker

¹¹ Target does not specify reference value.

¹² Global cost-effective pathways assessed by the IPCC Special Report 1.5°C tend to include fossil fuel use well beyond the time at which these could be phased out, compared to what is understood from bottom-up approaches, and often rely on rather conservative assumptions in the development of renewable energy technologies. This tends to result in greater reliance on technological CDR than if a faster transition to renewables were achieved. The scenarios available at the time of this analysis focus particularly on BECCS as a net-negative emission technology, and our downscaling methods do not yet take national BECCS potentials into account.

¹³ In some of the analysed pathways, the power sector assumes already a certain amount of carbon dioxide removal technologies, in this case bioenergy carbon capture and storage (BECCS).

¹⁴ Note that the model High Energy Demand shows a slight decline in electricity consumption between 2020 and 2030 mainly due to modelling artefacts. Consistency with national context: The significant gap between the starting year of the first generation of scenarios of the IPCC SR1.5 used in this analysis and the present has at times led to distortions when downscaling these scenarios to the national level.

¹⁵ WRI‘s report, State of Climate Action, 2021.