Japanese trading house Marubeni and Egyptian electric equipment manufacturer El Sewedy Electric have agreed with Egypt’s state-run electricity utility to conduct a feasibility study into the construction of a coal-fired power plant in Egypt, reported Reuters. The project represents an equivalent of a tenth of the country’s generating capacity. It is expected to be Egypt’s largest power plant with a 4GW coal-fired power station. According to some reports, the plant is to cost more than $3.54b, however, Marubeni stated that the size and cost of the plant had not been decided yet.

Marubeni and El Sewedy will conduct a feasibility study into building an ultra-supercritical coal-fired power plant for the state-owned Egyptian Electricity Holding Company in the West Mattrouh region, 450 km northwest of Cairo. The feasibility study is expected to be completed within two years.

Egypt’s government has set plans to raise generating capacity to 83mkW by 2022 – a 160% increase over 2014, to tackle chronic power shortages, informed Nikkei Asian Review. About 12mkW of this new capacity is to run on coal.

In addition, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi met earlier this week in Tokyo and agreed that Japanese companies were set to take part in Egyptian projects worth almost b in several sectors, including the electricity sector.