Egypt faces power cuts, potential drought

Despite the need to store extra water from this year’s floods to activate the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam in September 2015, the Egyptian government had to discharge extra amounts of water — other than the amount that is released from the Aswan Dam on a daily basis — to generate more hydroelectric power to solve the power cut crises. The Renaissance Dam, on the Blue Nile River in Ethiopia, is expected to become the largest hydroelectric power plant in Africa and will have direct consequences on Egypt and Sudan.

According to Hossam el-Moghazy, the Egyptian minister of water resources and irrigation, the Aswan Dam committee has discharged 10 million cubic meters (353 million cubic feet) from the Nile per day, for 10 days, to produce more hydroelectric energy.

In a news conference organized by the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation, Moghazy said that the emission of this amount of water from storage in Lake Nasser, which is considered strategic, occurred at a time when Egypt is struggling with drought and in terrible need to store every possible drop. “This is the cost of the terrorist acts committed by the extremist groups that bombed and destroyed electricity stations and towers, which led to long power cuts and the disruption of indispensable facilities,” Moghazy explained.