EBRD Bats For Women In Egypt’s RE Sector

• EBRD and GCF have launched a program to help Egypt increase the participation of women in its green energy ambitions
• As one of the aspects of the $7 million joint technical collaboration, the Programme for Supporting Renewable Energy and Promoting Gender Equality in Egypt, will identify barriers and address key challenges including potential skills mismatch that hamper women's involvement in the sector
• Along with Egyptian authorities, efforts will be made under the program to increase women's direct involvement and also impact it can have for women entrepreneurs of small and medium-sized enterprises

The burgeoning renewable energy sector of Egypt could do with more active participation of women. To encourage gender equality in this segment, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has launched the Programme for Supporting Renewable Energy and Promoting Gender Equality in Egypt.

The bank along with the Green Climate Fund (GCF) have included this aspect in their joint $7 million technical collaboration, under which they aim to identify and address the key barriers that create obstacles for the development of the region's renewable energy economy.

Through this program, EBRD and GCF want to support the country in enhancing renewable energy integration, policies and planning to support the country in meeting its target of 20% renewable energy generation by 2022 and 42% by 2035.

The program strives to identify a mismatch of potential skills that hamper women's participation in the sector. Then, along with the Egyptian authorities. efforts will be made to overcome these issues in order to enable increased involvement of women in the renewable energy sector of the country.

Another aspect of this program is to look at the impact that new renewable energy projects can have for women-led small and medium-sized enterprises, including recommendations for 'ways to facilitate a greater number of successful women-led small businesses in the sector'.

This initiative emanates from the commitment of both the entities to mainstream gender initiatives in their investments and projects. The GCF, says EBRD, is the first climate finance mechanism to include considerations for gender equality in their project cycle from the start.

EBRD has been instrumental in helping finance the growth of renewables in Egypt; it has committed funds for 16 renewable projects. Currently, it is supporting the nation's switch from FIT's to an auction based competitive procurement mechanism (see EBRD Tender For Egypt PV Auction Design).