Rural Energy Communities as Pillar towards Low Carbon Future in Egypt: Beyond COP27

Abstract

Egypt pays extraordinary attention to climate action, which is gaining momentum, coinciding with reaching the peak of the status quo by hosting the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference, Conference of Parties (COP27). Renewable energy sources are one of the principal axes of the state’s plan to combat climate change and open new horizons toward decarbonization. Rural commons act as a food basket and are essential to function in urban areas and enhance ecosystem services, even though currently they are facing extraordinary environmental challenges. Therefore, this study aims to restore the function of the rural commons from consumerism to productivity as an energy basket and create a tendency and momentum toward a self-sufficiency dogma by promoting the rural energy community concept from a top-down approach in Egypt. Two steps can articulate this: First, defining the legal key concept and showing its roots in European policies to provide a direction to this research. Second, by analyzing the current Egyptian legalization, laws, efforts, and best practices, those could address, allow, and encourage the concept’s core. The results proved that this is the first research to discuss the concept from the climate–energy–land use perspective, integrated with a previous bottom-up intervention. Meanwhile, it explains the current state of knowledge and a better understanding of the institutional context, showing the high level of coordination of cross sectors and proving that rural energy communities are presented in the bottom-up practices. This can support decisionmakers and paves the way for researchers, academic bodies, and energy experts to explore other insights.