MA Sultan - محمد سلطان
The policies used for the establishment of solar energy in Egypt have been always faced by failure either for the irrationality or insularity; the media coverage has been always neglecting what the people really need. In 1995, Herbert Simon came up with the term "Bounded rationality" as a trial to figure out why the marketplace has failed to eradicate irrational behavior. Tackling that with Egypt, Egypt is not rich of "fossil fuels reserves", and its main interest lies on exporting such fuel and gaining hard currency rather than selling it in a subsidized way. Therefore, Egypt repeatedly missed its major targets, and even since 1979, all the calls initiated by many people- like in Munufiyya- have failed to continue. Another actor of how Egypt is overwhelmed with such dilemma is that the country is not investing seriously in solar energy considering the fact that by the advent of 2030, the cost of the fossil fuels will be dramatically increased (Hansen el.al, 2004).According to Minister Sameh Fahmy's talk in 2009, Egypt will explore more in natural oil, and that accounted for severe criticism about Egypt's politics because the minister declared that the investment whether in exploring or administering the solar energy sector does not lie under the umbrella of Fahmy's responsibility. The author also highlighted the case study that he chooses to examine in Islamic Cairo where 3\4 of its population does not have any access to hot water and even their income cannot afford them paying for the subsidized services.
The case study's hypothesis is about how the Egyptian government is not exerting enough effort for their stated energy policies. The author examined 3 alternatives approaches that have been adopted by either the government officials or the private sector concerning achieving the potential national solar technologies:
"Infrastructure argument": Cairo is not infra-structurally prepared for the establishment of solar power.
"Social argument": it is about the lack of awareness about the privileges of using solar power which can initiate more incentives for the private sector or other sectors to invest in solar energy.
One significant aspect that should be considered before the establishment of solar energy is carefully determining required needs for any area. For example, the author mentioned three different places that have different needs, namely, Ramses&Gumhuriya, El Darb Al Ahmar, Ezbet El Zabaleen. For the first spot, there are few certain places that their roofs can be used to install the solar cells. For the second spot, the roof of Aga-Khan community school's annex can be used to install the cells, and other engineers and architects are keen to help and give assistance to such project, but the point of weakness is that such place is ancient, almost 700 years old, and installing the equipment can damage such a historic place. For the last spot, the roof of the Zabaleen's cycling education center can be used to install the cells to provide hot water for the children, but it is likable that the kids while running around can hit the cells or even throw stones at it.
The main problems of resorting to solar energy is the expensive cost, for the potential loss or profit or even just investing, in general, is very concentrated. Therefore, it is not an attractive sect for the businessmen who are keen for trusted profit. Also, social knowledge and manners should be altered to adopt the idea of "Do it yourself". For example, after the widespread of satellite dishes, the people became creative to find and come up with new places to install the dishes. Such a spirit should be adopted by the masses towards the use of solar energy because the solar instruments are even easier than the dishes to be installed. The slow pace of adopting the use of solar power can also be justified by how people are more inclined to subsidized gas and electricity.
A major problem about the status quo has to do more with the social constraints as Sigward Von Laue of SEKEM Corporation commented about the Egyptians as "they are the Risk of averse". Accordingly, accomplishing this aim is more about the beneficiaries. The political wing is not beneficent of adopting solar energy, and the people are not wholeheartedly seeking such energy. Thus, the other possible way is to redirect or readjust the usage of the taxes to be in favor of using solar powers. The incentives that have to be declared are to have cleaner air, "individually tailored energy", and decreasing the rate of blackouts or losing the equipment due to voltage spikes, and finally avoiding the danger of explosions or fire from the electricity or gas.
The essential difficulty about mobilizing the companies to adopt the solar approach is that they already have resources that are cheaper, whereas the government is afraid of displeasing any area currently have power while other areas are in a dire need for that. Even though it seems that the government does not daring taking such decision, it very beneficial for the government to adopt solar energy for the long term objectives because the fossil power is very cheaper and even the masses are calling for even more subsidizing the power, but for the future it is safer to use the solar powers as a renewable energy. Ironically, the Egyptians National Renewable Energy Authority's Annual Report 2005 stated the "due consideration" by the government since the 1970s, where the Egyptian government- after almost 40 years- dramatically failed to achieve the targets it put itself to achieve. Also, Tarek Selim, an economist, expounded the origin of this problem by explaining how Egyptians objectives and policies are just words on papers and not practiced. Moreover, Selim gave a crucial example tackling and highlighting this importance of this issue; the world average accessibility to water supplies is 80% whereas in Egypt it is almost 97% which really rings a bill about the very poor performance that Egypt has.
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