Securing Energy for Development in West Bank and Gaza
The Palestinian Territories face significant energy security challenges, already severe in Gaza, but also emerging in the West Bank. In Gaza, the available power supply only meets half the demand leading to rolling blackouts, alternating between 8...
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| Format: | Report |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/351061505722970487/Main-report http://hdl.handle.net/10986/28468 |
| Summary: | The Palestinian Territories face
significant energy security challenges, already severe in
Gaza, but also emerging in the West Bank. In Gaza, the
available power supply only meets half the demand leading to
rolling blackouts, alternating between 8 hours on and 8
hours off. Although the West Bank generally enjoys 24-hour
power supply, there have been emerging power shortages
during peak winter and summer months. With Palestinian
electricity demand projected to grow at an average annual
rate of around 3.5 percent for the coming years, a little
faster in Gaza and slower in the West Bank, energy shortages
can be expected to deteriorate unless new supply options are
found. Both Jordan and Egypt have recently overcome
interlinked power supply crises caused by a shortage of
Egyptian gas, and are now heading for significant power
surpluses. In principle, existing interconnection capacity
of 20 MW with Jordan and 20-30 MW with Egypt could be
upgraded to support higher volumes of imports. However,
Jordanian electricity is currently more expensive than
Israeli power due to heavy reliance on LNG, but is expected
to become cheaper as Israeli gas enters the Jordanian market
and renewables increase their share in the Jordanian
generation portfolio. On the other hand, the size of
Jordan’s power system is on par with the size of Palestinian
electricity demand, meaning that the amount of power
available for export may not be so large relative to
Palestinian needs. Egyptian power is currently cheaper than
Israeli power due to the historic low cost of natural gas;
however, the size of the Egyptian power system is 30 times
larger than the Palestinian demand making it relatively easy
for Egypt to supply the scale of power that West Bank and
Gaza might need. Nevertheless, historical imports from Egypt
into Gaza (which have been managed through a local Egyptian
distribution company rather than the national Egyptian
transmission operator) have proved unreliable due to
security issues in Sinai. In addition, Gaza has not yet
established any payment record with Egypt since the cost of
these imports has been covered by third party benefactors to
date. Finally, neither Jordan, nor Egypt have access to the
controversial ‘net lending’ mechanism that has so far
provided Israel with an informal payment security mechanism
to at least partially offset any payment risk from
Palestinian consumers. |
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