The following speech was delivered by Altaaqa Global Chief Commercial Officer, Mahmoud El Zaafarany, at the joint-chamber Ministerial Opening Ceremonies of the Powering Africa Summit & The Latin America Energy Forum in Washington DC in late February 2022 in Washington DC.
“On behalf of the Forum Sponsors Altaaqa Global Energy Services, welcome to the Powering Africa Summit and the Latin America Energy Forum.
We are delighted to have played a leading role in making this event possible again.
We are happy to see industry stakeholders from all over the world gathered in one roof, motivated by a unified purpose – to tackle the challenge of leading the world towards a smarter and cleaner tomorrow.
We have convened to heed the call for more responsibility and environmental consciousness within our industry. But at the same time, we are here to recognise and respond to the demand for readily available, reliable, and affordable power.
Our industry is in constant motion towards green solutions, but as it stands today, we have to acknowledge the truth that hydrocarbons are still the world’s primary source of energy, and remain indispensable in providing power, especially to industrializing nations in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
But as the foremost stakeholders of our industry, we find ourselves in an enviable position in our journey towards a sustainable future.
We hold the opportunity in our hands to innovate and improve on our current sources of energy and utilize them to power the change and catalyse the transition.
I am proud to report that we at Altaaqa Global, guided by the vision of our parent company Zahid Group, remains steadfast in our commitment of reducing the environmental impact of our operations, while offering the same trusted, fast-track and accessible power to our customers.
We are progressively developing power generation technologies that run on lower emission natural gas, and are, at the same time, primed to hybridize with PV solutions and battery storage to minimize fuel consumption.
With the lowering cost of solar and battery technologies, we envision that hybrid solutions will stay as one of the most cost-effective and sustainable baseload power solutions.
Be they temporary or on a BOOT contract, purely thermal or hybrid, our power plants provide significant cost-savings and reduction in carbon emissions, which dovetails with our customers’ functional, financial, and environmental concerns.
As part of the Zahid Energy Group, Altaaqa Global is uniquely and advantageously placed to synergize with our sister companies, each focused on delivering specialized energy solutions to a global clientele. We are joined in this event by Greencells – a leading international developer of PV power plants with 2.5GWof installed capacity.
In closing, I enjoin everybody to engage with our fraternity and participate in the discussions over the course of the days. Let us use our learnings and takeaways to inform and strengthen our short- and long-term strategies and guide our way as we implement solutions and stride towards our goals. May we all take up the common cause and be agents of real change and genuine energy transition.
I wish you all an enjoyable and fruitful conference here in Washington DC.”