An Assessment for Challenges facing Renewable Energy strategy in Egypt

Securing energy demand for next generations is one of the most challenges aspects facing any sustained development plans, due to the growing electric energy demand and Egypt as a country of limited fossil fuel resources has to diversify its energy portfolio by utilization of its renewable energy resources, mainly wind due to its economic potential and solar as proved by Egypt's wind and solar atlases. Egypt has adopted an ambitious plan to cover 20% of the generated electricity by renewable energy by 2020, including a 12% contribution from wind energy, translating more than 7200 MW grid-connected wind farms. Due to the high investment cost of solar energy technologies, still limited in spread all over the world on the other hand wind energy has an economic potential and becomes a commercial technology but the future potential for solar energy due to the limited land for wind energy. Current study will evaluate the Egyptian strategy for renewable energy up to 2020 and find how much the planned projects from the Egyptian government will fulfill its target, the economic study and the expected investment cost of these projects, and the environmental impacts of the renewable energy.