Morocco

Solar deployment continued to pick up in the Middle East and North Africa in 2019, the Middle East Solar Industry Association has said in its annual report.

The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre has published a report looking at the human rights due diligence performance of the renewables industry and examined individual generation methods. The report finds that, while the solar sector is not top of the sad list, its vest also isn’t completely unstained.

The Moroccan agency for sustainable energy is pre-qualifying developers for the Noor Midelt II project, a solar complex incorporating CSP and PV elements.

The nation’s renewable energy legislation will be updated to expand net metering for projects connected to the medium voltage grid, paving the way for a wave of decentralized installations.

The grouping, which includes UAE-based Masdar and Moroccan independent power producer Green of Africa, is planning to begin construction this year. The project is among those realized by the Moroccan Agency for Sustainable Energy, as part of the Noor Solar Plan to develop a minimum 2 GW of capacity by next year.

A new report analyzing 10 solar markets throughout Africa claims that the continent’s PV market could expand from about 5 GW at present to up to 30 GW by the end of the next decade.

While solar is lauded as a cheap energy resource in OECD countries, the cost of financing PV projects in developing nations has impeded progress. Development banks and the Clean Technology Fund they finance have played a key role in providing access to cheap financing for clean energy projects in many markets.

The two nations have signed a memorandum of understanding to build a third power link connecting their electricity systems. The news will again initiate hope for the transfer of solar energy from Africa to Europe, but is that hope justified?

The region’s climate, developing economies and demographic growth are driving increased electricity demand in the Middle East and North Africa. However, as a hub of conventional energy supply, the region has been slow to embrace PV. To capture more of the value chain and deliver the full potential of solar, there are increasing calls for distributed generation deployment to play a bigger role.

Through the procurement, now at the pre-qualification stage, Moroccan state-owned utility ONE aims to build seven large-scale PV plants in the south and east of the country. German development bank KfW is a partner in the project.