In Egypt, industry process emissions and energy-related CO₂ emissions from industry each accounted for about 11% and 12% respectively of total emissions in 2019. Energy-related emissions have fluctuated but have overall increased by 47% from 1990 to 2019. Process-related emissions have steadily increased, more than tripling over the same period. The largest industry sectors in Egypt include textiles, food processing and chemicals. The cement industry is the largest contributor to industry emissions in Egypt and was identified as the most attractive sector for mitigation efforts in the industry sector given its size and competitiveness.

Energy-related emissions from Egypt’s industry sector increased slower than process-related emissions. The industry sector remains highly reliant on fossil fuels, with about three quarters of the energy mix supplied by fossil fuels (37% natural gas, 25% oil and e-fuels, and 15% coal in 2019). Across analysed pathways, electrification increases from about a quarter of the industrial energy mix in 2019 to 26-32% by 2030 and 59-70% by 2050, for most ambitious scenarios. Fossil fuels remain in the mix, but coal is largely phased out around 2030-2035. Within the industry sector, fertilizer production is the largest energy consumer in Egypt. On October 2021, the Sovereign Wealth Fund of Egypt signed an agreement for a green ammonia plant that utilises green hydrogen feedstock and renewable energy.

While some models indicate that process-related emissions could reach zero emissions before 2040 at the earliest, this would require investments in innovation and R&D in the sector to drive the decarbonisation of the harder-to-abate process-related emissions.

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.