Early this year, Morocco unveiled an ambitious agenda for its power sector. The country has been walking the talk since then. The Moroccan agency for Sustainable Energy (MASEN) recently opened the first stage in a tender process to build, operate and maintain a 230MW solar plant near the town of Midelt in the Atlas mountains.
Before now in May 2018, MASEN awarded Noor Midelt-I, a-800 MW plant worth about $781.5 million, to a consortium of France’s EDF Renewables, UAE’s Masdar and Morocco’s Green Energy of Africa. Both plants will use concentrated solar plant (CSP) and photovoltaic (PV) technologies, MASEN said. The two plants will have a combined capacity exceeding that of the already operational 580 MW Noor Ouarzazate CSP plant in southeastern Morocco, one of the largest in the world.
Morocco plans to exceed 52 percent of renewable energy in the national energy mix by 2030. Already by the end of 2018, Morocco had installed 1,215 MW of wind energy, 1,770 MW in hydropower and 700 MW in solar, according to official figures.
Aziz Rabbah Morocco’s Minister of Energy, Mines and Sustainable Development Aziz Rabbah had outlined the country’s key projects for the year in January. He said power networks and sustainable development would be key focus areas in 2019 and would include several network interconnection projects, studies to connect the grid to Europe and a third interconnection to Portugal.
Morocco’s goal, Rabbah said, is to create a regional electricity market and connect its grid to sub-Saharan Africa through Mauritania and also move forward with partial electricity auto production and studies to see if it is feasible to auto produce 20 to 30 percent of total national output by 2030.
In moving towards green and efficient energy, the ministry will design roadmaps to improve the sustainability of transport and buildings, including ministerial buildings. Strategic committees will be put in place to overlook energy efficiency in transport, industry, agriculture and public lighting. To support these challenges, a $92 million agreement was signed between Morocco and Germany in October 2018.
Also, the long-awaited national authority of electricity regulation will became operational in the first quarter of 2019, in a bid to reassure private investors that the country’s electricity market is stable.
Can Nigeria get it right?
No country in Africa should be more decisive and pragmatic in solving its power sector conundrum than Nigeria.
“Nigeria is projected to grow to a population of 450 million people by 2050 (highest population growth in Africa) and become the third most populated country globally (behind only China and India). This will spur a high demand from power industries and other commercial enterprises,” Austin Avuru, Seplat Chief Executive Officer, said at a recent presentation at the Nigerian Stock Exchange’ Facts Behind the Figures.
It is therefore imperative that Nigeria should pursue energy independence as an enabler for industrial development, commerce, environmental and social sustainability. This will be a real GDP growth driver for Nigeria, and would reduce production cost with reduced power costs to businesses, raise standard of living, develop human capital, and reduce environmental degradation and health risks.
FRANK UZUEGBUNAM
