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Morocco’s ambitious renewable energy plan

Morocco plans to become 40% renewable by 2020 http://www.evwind.es/noticias.php?id_not=19690 July 16, 2012 The 160-megawatt project is part of the larger, 500 megawatt Concentrating Solar Power Ouarzazate site. Morocco starts an ambitious plan to build out 6 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2020, along with a variety of technologies, including wind power, solar energy, biomass, hydro and other technologies as the country currently imports
90 percent of its energy.

Morocco will soon name the winner of a 160 megawatt concentrated solar
power project.

The 160-megawatt solar thermal project is part of the larger, 500
megawatt CSP Ouarzazate site. ” It’s the first step,” said Saïd
Mouline, director of Morocco’s Agency of Development for Renewable
Energies and Energy Efficiency (ADEREE). “When the winner is known
there will be a power purchase agreement with MASEN (Moroccan Agency
for Solar Energy).”

“We have a strong proactive policy at the highest level of the state.”
That includes plans to build out a full 2 gigawatts of solar power
over the next 8 years. “The solar can be all solar technologies,”
Mouline said. That’s partly because of the country’s resources. “Some
sites are more CSP-oriented, some others are PV oriented,” he said.

In addition to solar, the country also will install 2 gigawatts of
wind. That effort’s already underway, according to Mouline. He said
the country already has 300 megawatts of wind turbines installed. The
country also will rely on hydro power for more of its renewable
portfolio.

“We are strongly believing in this because most of our energy is
coming from Europe today,” Mouline said. For instance, Morocco now
gets a lot of its electricity from Spain via transmission lines. “All
this is to decrease our energy dependence.” For now the country is
focused on meeting its own needs. “All the power plants were on the
coast line, because we used to import coal. With renewables we are
inside the country,” Mouline said. Some of the resources in more
remote locations will bring jobs to those regions. It’s one of the
main reasons the country opted to take the slightly more expensive
route of not building coal plants, he said.

The country also is interested in exporting renewable energy and is in
talks with Europe to feed power back across the power lines, according
to Mouline. The country also created policy that allows people to
develop projects to export electricity.

July 16, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AFRICA, renewable