تلاش بین منابع مبتنی و طرح های توسعه پایدار-تجزیه و تحلیل سیاست انرژی اخیر مصر

This paper discusses Egypt's recent energy sector and policy developments against objectives and issues of the energy policy strategy adopted in 2007. It reviews energy supply and demand, pricing and subsidies as well as institutional arrangements and respective reform projects from the perspective of assessing achievements. It identifies the consequences of the policy and the long-term outlook and reports on the internal policy struggle. The policy strategy of 2007 is directed at energy security, social and industrial development. Environmental or climate objectives play no role. Energy efficiency is at best considered an instrument. The implementation of the strategy has been successful on the supply side, but not on the demand side. Price reform, refocusing subsidies and sector reform were not achieved. This has negatively affected energy efficiency and diversification, energy availability and supply security, the State budget and the sector's financial capacity. It causes rising energy import requirements and increasing risks to the current account balance. In spite of that, “old guard” and industrial establishment favour the resource-based development based on cheap energy and protract price reform, whereas another group of businessmen wants a sustainable development concept and monetize the oil and gas production to invest in Egypt's competitiveness.

Renewable energy and nuclear issues have recently drawn international attention to energy in North Africa in general and in Egypt in particular, manifest in this Special Issue of Energy Policy and many other articles and studies. From the domestic Egyptian perspective, however, these issues represent only a minor part of the scope of energy policy issues. When assessing a country's energy policy, it is fair to confront it with its own declared objectives and proposals. Therefore the key features of Egypt's official energy policy are the principal reference and continuous thread running through this paper's analysis of the physical energy, allocation and the institutional aspects of Egyptian energy policy. The current effectiveness of the system can then be distinguished and evaluated. Unresolved issues and new challenges can be identified and the current response of government and conflicts in policy orientation observed and discussed. In Egypt's case, it is difficult to support the analysis with reliable and recent data and other information or to refer to qualified literature. Data availability has deteriorated since the Organisation for Energy Planning (OEP) was dissolved in 2006. Decisions of the respective government bodies including the Cabinet of Ministers and the Supreme Council of Energy (SEC) are not published systematically, except when they become law, and few research institutes have completed studies. The data and information base of this article therefore consist of external sources, including International Energy Agency (IEA, 2009a), World Energy Conference (WEC, 2008) and BP world energy statistics (BP, 2009), as well as internal sources, such as State Owned Holdings annual reports, information obtained from key advisors and officials during and on both official and independent magazine and newspaper articles.