Egypt’s Migratory Soaring Birds project wins Energy Globe Award

30 June 2020 – Egypt: With more than 180 participating countries, Egypt’s “Conservation of migratory birds along the Red Sea/Rift Valley flyway” project won the Energy Globe Award for National Project 2020.

For Over 20 years now, the Energy Globe Award has been honoring the best projects addressing environmental issues. This year, Egypt’s pioneer project to protect migratory birds along the Red Sea/Rift Valley flyway was recognized internationally.

The Gulf of Suez falls into one of the heaviest bird migration routes in autumn and spring seasons (Rift Valley / Red Sea flyway). This flyway is the second most important flyway for migratory birds, AN estimated 1.5 million birds of 37 species use this corridor between their breeding grounds in Europe and West Asia.

GoS great wind energy potential has stimulated rapid development of wind energy facilities posing additional risk to migratory soaring birds (MSBs) using the area as main migration route. “The Migratory Soaring Birds” project was launched aiming to mainstream considerations for migratory soaring birds in the productive sectors along the flyway that pose the greatest risk to the safe migration of birds.

With its tangible progress, the project succeeded in making the flyway safer for migratory birds. Less than 19 bird causalities were recorded in the season of migration with minimum energy loss, enabling the renewable energy sector to expand its production. Through this project, 50 new jobs as bird watchers have been created within the local communities, while 100 key stakeholders and 2,500 individuals have received training in bird conservation and the importance of using renewable energy. The project also makes use of advanced radar technology and has applied the standard techniques of shut down on demand.

RCREEE is very proud to support and contribute to this pioneer solution with the Egyptian government to further boost Egypt’s renewables capacity and help save the environment and biodiversity.

To further support renewables development while cherishing biodiversity, RCREEE initiated the Active Turbine Management Program (ATMP) in 2015 to determine the optimum turbines operations periods during the heavy bird migratory seasons during pre-, under-, and post-construction of wind farms in GoS.

RCREEE has signed the program’s Protocol with three governmental institutions namely Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency (EEAA), New and Renewable Energy Authority (NREA) and Egyptian E Egyptian Electricity Transmission Co. (EETC). It facilitates cooperation among relevant stakeholders and provides a strategic and operational framework to assess the environmental impacts of wind power plants in the GoS. Based on it, RCREEE on behalf of private wind energy developers, develops, manages, and implements ATMP for more than 1500 MW wind farms. RCREEE activities includes  Bird Monitoring Program (BMP), Shutdown On-Demand (SOD) Programs, collision fatality monitoring, assessment of SOD-Program impact on energy yield and ATMP Operational Guidelines.

More on ATMP:https://rcreee.org/node/4300/

About the Regional Center for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (RCREEE) 

The Regional Center for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (RCREEE) is an intergovernmental organization with diplomatic status that aims to enable and increase the adoption of renewable energy and energy efficiency practices across Pan-Arab countries and is the Official technical arm institution of both League of Arab State – Energy Department and Arab Ministerial Council for Electricity (AMCE).

RCREEE teams-up with governments, international organizations, IFIs and Private Sector via several forms of partnerships to initiate and lead clean energy policy dialogues, strategies, technologies, managing the facilitation of RE investment platforms and capacity development in order to increase Arab states’ share of tomorrow’s modern energy solutions.

Having today 17 Arab countries among its members, RCREEE strives to lead renewable energy and energy efficiency initiatives and expertise in all Arab states based on its strategic plan approved by its Board of Trustees.