Empower, a biogas and waste management company, negotiates with a Saudi company to implement a waste-to-energy facility (WtE) with a capacity of 4MW and $28m investments. Chairperson of Empower Hatem El-Gamal told Daily News Egypt that the negotiations are currently in an advanced stage. "Both the plant and the produced electricity will be implemented for a company located in southern Saudi Arabia, and the agreement is expected to be concluded within weeks," he said without revealing the Saudi company's name. El-Gamal added that Saudi banks will finance 70% of the project's cost, and the remainder will be shared equally between Empower and the Saudi company. He explained that the proposed tariff for the produced electricity is set at 12 cents per kilowatt/hour (kW/h), which is a good value compared to the price of electricity in Saudi Arabia. He stressed that his company has three main criteria when implementing an IPP project, which are: the ability to sell electricity directly to customers, reasonable tariff, and the location of the project, as it should be within a livestock farm to secure the plant's needs of waste. Empower decided to reorient its EGP 2.4bn investment plan in Egypt due to the low price of kilowatt-hours sold from these projects. El-Gamal stressed that the company backed out of the contract with North Delta Company for Electricity Production, which required the establishment of five stations to produce electricity from sewage with a capacity of 5MW and investments of EGP 470m because the tariff adopted by the government was about 103 cents per kW/h. He added that the company's plan is to implement the project within seven years, including the construction of 18 stations that produce electricity from sewage. However, they now redirected investments to construct stations to generate electricity from solid waste in municipalities, with a tariff of EGP 1.4 per kW/h.
