Egyptian leader El-Sisi chairs meeting on ambitious Africa-Europe power interconnection project with Copelouzos group execs

An ambitious project to connect Egypt’s electricity grid with Greece, and by extension with the rest of southeast Europe and possibly Italy and beyond, received another very high-profile fillip on Saturday, with Egyptian President Abdel El-Sisi himself chairing a meeting with the head of a Greek energy multinational.

El-Sisi received the founder and head of the Copelouzos group, Dimitris Copelouzos, at the presidential mansion in Cairo, for a meeting also attended by the country’s prime minister, relevant minister and executives of the Athens-based company.

Copelouzos Group is a lead company in a project aimed to construct an undersea cable that will carry 3,000MW of RES electricity from the northern Egyptian coast directly the greater Athens area.

According to the company, preliminary planning and talks for the GREGY project are “proceeding at a rapid pace”, with the Egyptian leader also speaking by phone last week with Greek PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

In a press release issued on Saturday, the Egyptian presidency noted that “…President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi met with the President of Copelouzos Group, Mr. Dimitris Copelouzos. The meeting was attended by Prime Minister Dr. Moustafa Madbouly, Minister of Electricity and Renewable Energy Dr. Mohamed Shaker and a number of senior executives from the Greek Group.

“The Spokesman for the Presidency, Ahmed Fahmy, said the meeting touched on opportunities for cooperation with the Greek Group to implement electricity production projects from renewable energy sources in Egypt, and transfer them to Europe through Greece via the electrical connection between the two countries. This shall maximize benefiting from the modern infrastructure established and developed by Egypt in the field of electricity over the past years, in addition to the natural resources it enjoys, such as wind and solar energy sources.
“There was agreement to continue the ongoing studies to crystallize cooperation with Copelouzos Group  to establish projects for the production and transfer of clean energy from Egypt to Europe through Greece to consolidate Egypt’s position as a regional hub for the trading of all types of energy.”