The Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights (ECESR) in partnership with Heinrich Böll Stiftung (North Africa Office) launches “80 Gigawatts of Change, Egypt’s Future Electricity Pathways”, the first report of its kind to be modeled and analyzed by civil society. ‘80 GWs’ models how Egypt’s electricity sector could look in 20 years’ time if technical, social and environmental constraints and community impacts are taken into account.

The report, which was a result of a participatory drafting process engaging different stakeholders, offers seven different energy pathways, each with different implications including costs, greenhouse gas emissions, job creation, impacts of pollution and what infrastructure is required . These seven pathways are based on a vision for Egypt to develop sustainably, creating stable jobs for Egyptians, building the capacity of communities to generate their own sources of clean energy, reducing the environmental impacts from generating energy – such as air, water and land pollution – and to ensure that Egypt is well placed to be self sufficient in meeting its energy needs now and into the future.

For the first time, this study shows that Egypt has the potential to build a large energy efficiency industry that creates thousands of jobs, reduces the total demand for electricity, brings citizens’ bills down, costs less for the government to implement and which reduces the country’s greenhouse gas emissions footprint.