EU Opens Solar Project in Gaza - Next Gas?
The European Union said August 2 it switched on a large solar array in the Palestinian territory of the Gaza strip that will provide 0.5 megawatts of electricity to fuel a desalination plant in southern Gaza. (Banner photo credit: European Commission)
Natural gas is the usual fuel used to run desalination plants in the Mediterranean basin but is unavailable in Gaza - hence the EU's co-funding of the facility. But there is untapped gas offshore Gaza.
The EU said the Southern Gaza Desalination Plant that it has funded currently provides drinking water to 75,000 inhabitants of Gaza and envisages that its expansion could serve 250,000 people there by 2020. Between 2006 and 2017, the EU spent €128mn ($150mn) to fund drinking water in Palestine, with €21mn spent in 2018 mainly in Gaza where it says 97% of water is unfit for human consumption.
Along with other partners, it now plans a larger desalination project further north in Gaza that would serve 2mn people, but has not stated its start-up date or what fuel it would use.
On March 20, the EU hosted a pledging conference in Brussels for a Gaza Central Desalination Plant that raised commitments of €456mn, including from the World Bank and Islamic Development Bank. That represents 80% of the total €562.3mn ($657mn) project cost. It did not identify the fuel intended for the project; however population density in the rest of Gaza may mean that a solar array is not feasible.
Whilst diesel and fuel oil are always options, use of offshore gas could be a possibility. The Palestinian authority in 1999 awarded the Gaza Marine offshore licence for 25 years to BG, Palestinian-owned contractor CCC, and Palestinian Investment Fund (PIF) a sovereign wealth fund; a year later BG discovered some 1 trillion ft3 of gas. War and instability meant it was never developed, with Shell acquiring BG in 2016, then divesting its 90% stake and operatorship of the licence in April 2018.
PIF at the time said that a 45% interest - now equally held by it and CCC - would be sold to an international developer; early last month Greece's Energean told Reuters that it is in talks to acquire that interest.
In other news on August 2, Dutch infrastructure fund DIF said it had sold two 5MW solar plants located in UK, which it had acquired in 2013, to another fund Greencoat Solar Assets II Limited for an undisclosed price. France's EDF and DIF acquired the northwest German gas transmission business Thyssengas in 2016 from Australia's Macquarie for around €700mn.