The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development will provide up to 63.5 million dollars to Nefer Benban for Renewable Energy, the project company developing a solar and battery storage plant in the Benban complex near Aswan in southern Egypt. The package comprises up to 56 million dollars from the EBRD’s own resources and up to 7.5 million dollars of concessional financing from the Clean Technology Fund of the Climate Investment Funds. Nefer Benban is owned by Infinity Power and Hassan Allam Utilities Energy.
The project combines a 258.5 megawatt peak solar plant with a 120 megawatt hour battery storage system, which the EBRD says makes it one of the first solar plants in Egypt to include battery storage. Output will be sold to the Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company under a 25 year power purchase agreement. The plant is expected to supply electricity equivalent to the needs of about 310,000 homes and avoid more than 349,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year.
The headline figures need reconciling. The 127 million dollars carried in some coverage is not the size of this package and not the project cost. It is the aggregate debt package for the project: the EBRD agreed a 65 million dollar construction bridge loan with HAU Energy in April 2026, Germany’s DEG is contributing an equal amount alongside it, and the new 63.5 million dollar package sits within that aggregate. Renewables Now put the project cost at about 180 million dollars.
The financing sits in the energy pillar of Egypt’s Nexus of Water, Food and Energy initiative, which targets 10 gigawatts of privately developed renewable capacity. It was announced on the same day as the Alcazar wind financing reported in yesterday’s edition, taking the EBRD’s announced Egypt renewables lending across the two days’ reporting to more than 200 million dollars of its own money.