In Egypt, the transport sector is the second largest source of emissions (16%) after the power sector. In 2019, the transport sector almost entirely relied on oil, with a small contribution from non-biomass gas fuels (2%) and electricity (0.3%).

Across analysed pathways, the extent of electrification varies, reaching 3 to 28% by 2030 and 24 to 82% by mid-century for the most ambitious scenarios. Pathways with lower electrification rates have higher shares of hydrogen or biofuels, which reach 12-52% and 16-25% of the transport energy mix by 2050, respectively. Given Egypt’s limited available agricultural land and water resources, production of energy crops for biofuels faces challenges; however, IRENA has identified significant potential for jatropha and sugar residues to supply biodiesel in Egypt, with biofuels supplying about 10% of Egypt’s transport energy mix by 2030 in their REmap Case.

In Egypt’s 2021/22 budget, planned investment in the transport sector more than doubled compared to 2020 and years before. The transport sector also received more funding from multilateral and bilateral development partners in 2020 than any other sector, amounting to USD 1.8 billion. Projects include major rail developments and the Greater Cairo Air Pollution Management and Climate Change Project which includes finance for electric buses and charging infrastructure. The government also has plans to manufacture electric vehicles starting in 2022 and install 4000 charging stations in 2021 and 2022. On August 2021, a pilot project was announced to produce green hydrogen for buses.

Egypt’s NDC does not include actions to shift away from oil in the transport sector, but does indicate the government’s intention to promote a modal shift for freight and passenger transit to rail, river and buses.

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.