Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Morocco is on a green energy roll, as the government’s far-sighted plan to move the North African country to renewables makes it a leader in the region.
The installed renewables capacity increased 5% from 2021 to 2025, to 12 gigawatts, according to an announcement in mid-May of the Minister of Energy Transition, Leila Benali.
Morocco is a developing country of some 38.4 million people, with a nominal per capita GDP of about $4,500 a year. That population is close to Canada’s 40 million or California’s 39.4 million. But the nominal per capita GDP in Canada is 11 times that of Morocco. Morocco’s national GDP of something like $150 bn. puts it in the company of the Dominican Republic or Kenya.
But eat your hearts out, Americans. Our populous and (so far) wealthy society does not have a minister of energy transition, and Morocco does.
And unlike the United States, which is about to commit green energy suicide under the dirty-energy Trump regime, Morocco has big plans to expand its renewables. It plans to get 50% of its electricity from renewables by 2030.
Morocco currently has about 1.5 gigawatts of installed solar, but that is expected to grow to over 3 GW in only three years, by 2028.
Just for example, a plan for 1.1 new gigawatts of solar has just been signed by Abu Dhabi’s Taqa with the Moroccan firm Nareva and the Mohammed VI Fund. The $14 billion project will create new solar farms and desalinization plants.
Some really interesting experiments are being tried. Tangier Med Port is planning to get the electricity for its functioning, some 14 megawatts, from a floating solar array at the Oued Raml reservoir. Solar panels are bulky and take up a lot of room, so having them float atop water solves the problem of land use. Moreover, if they are installed over the water of a reservoir or bay that is vulnerable to high rates of evaporation, they help preserve the water, and this is the hope with the Tangier Port project. As much as a third of the water in a reservoir can evaporate under Morocco’s torrid sun, so this would potentially be a big savings. This reservoir supplies drinking water to the port complex, as well.
“Reservoir Imagined,” Digital, ChatGPT, 2025
An enormous such floating PV project is being studied, as well, for the Oued el-Makhazine reservoir, where there is talk of installing 22,000 floating solar panels.
And after a year of hard technical repair work, the Noor Ouarzazate III solar plant is back up, after it was put out of commission in 2024 by a molten salt tank leak. (Molten salt is a battery technology that allows storage of solar energy so it can be released at night.) Minister Benali observed, “Our commitment to renewables remains unwavering. Noor Ouarzazate III’s return marks another milestone in our clean energy journey.”
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