Morocco eyes development of Africa’s first offshore wind farm
Fossil fuels dominate Moroccan energy mix but country boasts rich wind resources off its Atlantic coast
Morocco is planning to develop what could be Africa’s first offshore wind farm as it puts out a call for assistance in conducting feasibility studies.
The Moroccan Agency for Sustainable Energy (Masen) has posted tender documents on the European Investment Bank (EIB) portal seeking technical assistance for feasibility studies.
The call for tender was cancelled yesterday but “will be relaunched” according to documents on the EIB portal.
Masen said in the documents that studies have shown that Morocco has a “high potential to exploit offshore wind.”
The World Bank has estimated Morocco has 200GW of offshore wind potential, with 22GW of this fixed bottom and 178GW floating. Its best resource is on the Atlantic coast, which boasts high wind speed and shallow waters.
Masen said it has “committed to pushing forward the development of an offshore wind industry,” building on “competencies gained industry-wide in other locations”.
Masen is planning its offshore wind pilot project near the port city of Essaouira on the Atlantic coast. The region around Essaouira has some of Morocco’s highest wind speeds, clocking at between 9-10 metres per second, and can support fixed-bottom projects.
It is looking to procure technical assistance to carry out the various studies required to assess the feasibility of this project – including an energy market review, site selection for the project and supply chain assessment.
This will it said help “ultimately guide the decision-making process (including mapping out mitigants to potential issues) before more advanced studies are performed, and construction can begin.”
The move comes as Morocco, a country of 38 million people, looks to diversify its fossil fuel-heavy energy mix. Currently it has around 4GW of renewables capacity.
There have been other aborted plans to develop offshore wind projects in Tanzania and Kenya.
Sean Whittaker, lead offshore wind specialist with the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation, said that "one of the big considerations in Morocco is that they have an abundant onshore wind and solar resource (and lots of land) so cost competitiveness of offshore wind is an important question."
"Certainly a study like the one outlined here will help to answer that question."