TODAY: Egypt’s SCZone is on track to secure financing to build up its green hydrogen infrastructure + Fertiglobe is partnering with AD Ports to expand its ammonia shipping and storage
Good morning, friends. We have another spate of updates from around the region and beyond this morning, but first…
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OUR TOP STORIES- Egypt’s Suez Canal Economic Zone (SCZone) is on course to receive a EGP 30 bn loan with a 15-year maturity date from a coalition of local banks to finance the infrastructure for a number of green hydrogen projects, a source at the Finance Ministry told Enterprise. Further afield, Belgian utilities company Fluxys is acquiring a 4.9% stake in state-owned transmission system operator OQ Gas Network (OQGN) and has signed an MoU to explore partnerships in Oman’s hydrogen and CO2 infrastructure.
^^ We have details on these stories and much more in the news well, below.
HAPPENING TODAY: The World Power-to-X Summit is kicking off today and running through to Thursday in Marrakech, Morocco. The event brings together policymakers, industry leaders, and innovators in green hydrogen to showcase success stories in the carbonfree industry. It will also explore scaling-up projects throughout the Power-to-X value chain and hold discussions on harmonizing roadmaps of contiguous countries and adjacent regions.
THE BIG CLIMATE STORY OUTSIDE THE REGION- Climate protesters take to the streets of New York: Tens of thousands of protestors marched on New York on Sunday ahead of the United Nations General Assembly meeting today to call for an end to fossil fuel extraction and for world leaders to ramp up climate action targets to safeguard future generations. Led by New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the demonstrators aim to mobilize a movement that is “too big and too radical to ignore” in a bid to hold governments and big oil accountable for the damages fossil fuels have on the economy and communities across the world. Between 50-75k demonstrators filled the streets of Manhattan marking the largest climate protest the country has seen in the past five years.
The story grabbed headlines in the international press yesterday: Reuters | AP News | New York Times | Bloomberg | Financial Times | The Guardian | Washington Post | The Wall Street Journal | CNBC | France 24
OVER IN COPLAND- UN high-level champions release two new papers on financing for emerging economies: The UN Climate Change High-Level Champions launched two papers outlining recommendations on how to break financing barriers for the climate transition in emerging economies, according to a statement. The papers are designed to help to secure the USD 1 tn in annual finance that developing countries need by 2030 to take effective climate action and restore nature, as backed up by the Sharm-El-Sheikh Adaptation Agenda (pdf) and the 2030 Breakthroughs.
The details: The climate champions put forth five key suggestions for addressing the climate and nature finance gap: provide developing countries with a 1% interest rate loan with a 10-year grace period and a 20-year repayment period through multilateral banks; introduce credit-guarantee schemes to attract private sector involvement such as co-financing, risk sharing, and sustainability-linked sovereign debt instruments; suspend, cancel, or convert debt to repurpose payment into climate projects; establish a fund that helps mitigate foreign exchange risks for climate investments by providing cost-effective currency and country hedges for climate investment; and form a facility that works to accelerate projects and programs that preserve nature and help countries adapt to extreme weather.
Nature-positive business models have been valued at USD 10 tn: The reforms outlined by the climate champions are “especially critical for the mobilization of private capital for nature-positive solutions, such as reforestation, landscape restoration and coastal protection, which are pivotal – but currently underestimated, climate approaches,” the statement says. These nature-based solutions can deliver 37% of the global climate change mitigation required by 2030, and are a “low-risk, no regret” action to build climate resilience in nature and communities.
Who’s working on what: A working group for sustainability-linked sovereign financing of nature and climate was recently formed by the Sustainability-Linked Sovereign Debt Hub and the Nature Conservancy, supported by the UN climate champions and the COP28 UAE presidency. The working group aims to pool the capacities of international financial institutions to issue credit support instruments such as partial risk guarantees and political risk insurance, the statement explains.
ALSO- COP28 launches the Energy Transition Changemakers initiative: The COP28 presidency is inviting companies and organizations in the renewables, energy efficiency, low-carbon hydrogen, or heavy industry sectors to submit projects that have overcome challenges in the energy transition using innovative, replicable, and scalable approaches, according to a statement. The companies and organizations selected as Energy Transition Changemakers will present their work at COP28 in separate sessions dedicated to each of the four sectors, and will receive an award recognizing their efforts in the global energy transition. The projects can be anywhere in the world, and can be in either the development or operation stage. The deadline for submitting projects to the portal is on 9 October.
AND- The UAE urges countries to support food systems, agriculture, and climate at COP: Heads of state and ministers of agriculture and climate change have been urged to review and sign the declaration on food systems, agriculture, and climate prepared by the UAE president, UAE Climate Change and Environment Minister Mariam Almheiri said.
WATCH THIS SPACE #1- The EU may get ‘hooked’ on Chinese rare earths as it looks to source EV components, Reuters reports, citing a document set to be presented at an EU Commission meeting in Spain next month. The document cautions against substituting the EU’s previous dependency on Russian fuel imports for a reliance on Chinese lithium-ion batteries as the world transitions away from combustion engine vehicles. The EU — which has set out a target to phase out fossil fuel-powered vehicles by 2035 — should instead look to Africa and Latin America to source minerals critical to EV production, the paper notes. The bloc’s planned renewables and green fuels projects in coming years will need to be supplemented with adequate battery storage systems as well as electrolyzer tech to meet net-zero targets, with expectations the EU will have to 30x its supplies of lithium-ion batteries, fuel cells, and electrolysers.
REMEMBER- China controls about 28% of the world’s lithium supplies, and the US and the EU began talks on a transatlantic bargain on minerals earlier in March in a bid to counter Chinese dominance in the mining sector. Africa is home to an estimated 5% of the world’s total lithium supplies and mining expansions are expected to bring up the continent's capacity from the current 40k ton annual production rate to 497k tons by 2030. Over in Latin America, the Lithium Triangle which overlaps parts of Chile, Bolivia and Argentina, and Peru holds an estimated 67% of the world’s proven lithium reserves and produces half of the global supply of the EV-critical mineral.
WATCH THIS SPACE #2- Oman planning a mega hydrogen pipeline: Oman’s state-owned hydrogen company Hydrom is looking to establish a cross-country pipeline spanning 2k kilometers to transmit green fuels, TAP quoted Hydrom Planning Manager Hafsa Al Subhi as saying at the London Green Hydrogen Summit on Saturday. The first phase of the project will see the construction of a hydrogen transport system across the sultanate’s southern regions of Duqm, Al Jazir, and Salalah by 2030, with plans to connect all three transmission lines by 2040. By 2050, the hydrogen connection is expected to extend to the country’s capital. The country also has plans to extend its green hydrogen interconnector beyond its borders to the UAE, but this would be contingent on future market demands, Subhi said.
REMEMBER- Oman plans to produce 1 mn tons of green hydrogen annually by 2030, and has set out a target to up its green fuels generation capacity to some 8 mn tons by 2050. Oman’s state-owned green hydrogen company Hydrom signed six binding term sheet agreements last March worth a combined USD 20 bn for the production of green hydrogen. The projects will span an estimated area of 1.5k sq km in Al Wusta and Dhofar. Up to 40 times more land has been identified for potential production in the long term, according to Offshore Energy.
DATA POINT- MENA has doubled its renewables production volume in the last year: Countries across the Middle East and North Africa have expanded their renewables generation capacity by 57% between 1H 2022 and 1H 2023 to 19 GW, according to a report by the Global Energy Monitor (GEM). MENA is projected to again boost its renewables generation by another half from current volumes by 2024, GEM notes, citing projects the region has in the pipeline. The “incremental increase,” although a step in the right direction, is worrying given that MENA will need to more than 20x its renewable energy portfolio — from wind and solar power — to an estimated 500 GW to curb reliance on its 343 GW fossil fuel power mix. Countries with notable achievements in the clean energy front from our neck of the woods include the UAE, which saw renewables additions of 3 GW since mid-2022; Oman, which added 1.2 GW; Qatar, which added 0.8 GW; Libya, which added 0.5 GW; and Saudi Arabia, which added 0.4 GW.
An anticipated hike in renewables production from 2022 estimates: GEM notes that 21 countries across MENA have upped their renewables production targets, with eight states committing to tripling clean energy goals over the past year, cumulatively bringing up the region’s prospective renewables portfolio to an estimated 361 GW, up from 292 GW in 2022. Of the announced 361 GW, 171 GW are in the pre-construction stage — having either bagged land allocation agreements, achieved financial close, or secured PPAs and offtake agreements, and the remaining 46% have only been announced.
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CIRCLE YOUR CALENDAR-
Saudi Arabia will host the MENA Climate Week from Sunday, 8 October to Thursday, 12 October in Riyadh. The four-day summit will discuss climate solutions ahead of COP28. It aims to provide a platform for policymakers, businesses, and others to exchange climate solutions as well as discuss obstacles and avenues in different regions. It considers four major systems-based tracks: energy systems and industry, cities, urban and rural settlements, infrastructure and transport, land, ocean, food and water, societies, health, livelihoods, and economies. You can register here.
The UAE will host the UNCTAD World Investment Forum from Monday, 16 October to Friday, 20 October in Abu Dhabi. This year’s theme focuses on sustainable investments, with a diverse range of climate financing sessions on promoting investments in the blue economy, agrifood systems, sustainable infrastructure, carbon markets, the circular economy, strategic minerals for decarbonization, and sustainable tourism. Some sessions will tackle reform of financial institutions needed to reach net zero, such as a session on integrating nature-related risk into capital markets and financing an equitable nature economy. Public sector investments and stock exchange action on climate disclosures will also be discussed.
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