7 Dec 2009

EGYPT / WIND POWER

As the International Summit on Climate Change kicks off today in Copenhagen , there’s news from Egypt that it aims to generate one fifth of its electricity from renewable sources, including wind power, by 2020. To help reach that ambitious goal, it is tapping into a World Bank Clean Technology Fund. WORLD BANK

Posted at: December 7, 2009 4:40 pm

Duration: 01:51

Available in: SD

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Full script

STORY:  EGYPT / WIND POWER
TRT: 1.51
SOURCE: WORLD BANK
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH /ARABIC / NATS

DATELINE:  JUNE 2009, ZAFARANA, CAIRO, RED SEA COAST, EGYPT

JUNE 2009, ZAFARANA WIND FARM, EGYPT

1. Wide shot, turbines 
2. Tilt up, turbine to turbine shadow
3. Wide shot, electrical grid
4. Close up, wind turbine
5. Wide shot, drive by the grid
6. SOUNDBITE(English) Aabou Bakr Abdel Hameed Mohamed, General Manager for Maintenance, Zafarana Wind Farm:
"The amount of wind energy right now it's one percent. It will be 12 percent by 2020."
7. Close up, construction of grid
8. Wide shot, construction of grid
9. Med shot, worker with helmet
10. Wide shot, worker digging
11. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Abd el Rahman Salah el Din, Chairman, National Renewable Energy Agency, Egypt:
"We were able to learn from initial experiments what kinds of turbines, what kind of wind mills, and towers and we gained the technical ability to come up with a resource map for Egypt and the Suez canal area which shows that these areas have the highest wind speeds in the world, ten-and- a-half meters per second."
12. Close up, computer screen at wind farm
13. Close up, man looking at screen
14. Wide shot, 2-shot looking at screen
15. Med shot, transmission lines power grid

JUNE 2009, RED SEA COAST, EGYPT
           
16. Med shot, driving shot past construction
     
JUNE 2009, CAIRO STREET
           
17. Med shot, pedestrians on bridge with traffic

JUNE 2009, RED SEA COAST, EGYPT
           
18. Med shot, traffic on road passing Zafarana wind farm

STORYLINE:

Turbines at this Egyptian wind farm turn in the strong, hot wind blowing off the Red Sea, producing power that is fed into the electrical grid.

Today, wind power supplies only a fraction of Egypt's electricity.  
But with demand for power growing by up to eight percent a year, more wind farms are being built.

SOUNDBITE( English) Abou Bakr Abdel Hameed Mohamed, General Manager for Maintenance, Zafarana Wind Farm:
"The amount of wind energy right now it's one percent.  It will be 12 percent by 2020."

The building and managing of wind farms has until now been government run. In order to quickly expand, the government is commercializing its wind program.

It knows exactly where new windmills need to go.

SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Abd El Rahman Salah El Din, Chairman , National Renewable Energy Agency, Egypt:
"We were able to learn from initial experiments what kinds of turbines, what kind of wind mills, and towers and we gained the technical ability to come up with a resource map for Egypt and the Suez Canal area which shows that these areas have the highest wind speeds in the world, ten-and-a-half meters per second."

The World Bank is helping Egypt scale up wind energy development by opening it up to private companies and by supporting construction of a 300 kilometre long transmission line linking a future wind farm to the grid.

A growing population is driving an increasing demand for power.  As that increase is being met by burning more fossil fuels, the country's greenhouse gas emissions are among the fastest-growing in the world.

Electricity and traffic account for almost two thirds of those emissions.

Along with water and solar power, wind power provides a clean and renewable alternative.   
Egypt aims to provide a fifth of its total power from renewable energy in the next ten years.   And it could lead North African and Middle Eastern neighbors to follow in its footsteps.

Filed under 03.03.00 - ENVIRONMENT 16.01.00 - DEVELOPMENT AND TRANSFER OF TECHNOLOGY AND PROMOTION OF SCIENCE EGYPT WORLD BANK.