Wedoany.com Report on Feb 11th, The Moroccan government recently signed a cooperation agreement with the international ORNX consortium to develop a large-scale green ammonia project with a total investment of $4.5 billion in Laayoune, located in the country's Western Sahara region. This project is seen as a crucial step for Morocco in advancing its energy transition and establishing a hydrogen economy.
The project plans to construct an integrated renewable energy platform. This platform will include wind and solar power generation facilities with a combined installed capacity exceeding 2 gigawatts, a supporting battery energy storage system, approximately 900 megawatts of electrolyzers for producing green hydrogen, and a desalination plant to ensure a water supply for production. In the initial operational phase, the facility is expected to produce about 100,000 tons of green hydrogen annually, which will be converted via a synthesis process into approximately 560,000 tons of green ammonia. The products are planned to be supplied to both the domestic Moroccan market and the international market.
The ORNX consortium is composed of the American company Ortus, the Spanish company Acciona, and the German company Nordex. The partners stated that the core objective of the project is to establish a solid, long-term industrial foundation for the international trade of ammonia as an effective carrier for hydrogen. This green hydrogen project is a significant component of Morocco's national hydrogen strategy framework, known as the "Morocco Offer." This framework aims to incentivize investment and development in the green hydrogen sector by providing up to 30,000 hectares of land resources for each large-scale project.
Morocco has set clear targets for its clean energy transition, providing policy support for projects like the one involving ORNX. According to its national strategic plan, Morocco aims to build approximately 6 gigawatts of dedicated renewable energy capacity by 2030 to support green hydrogen production, targeting both domestic and international demand for low-carbon energy. To achieve these goals, the Moroccan government has approved hydrogen and derivative investment projects totaling around $32.5 billion and is committed to increasing the share of renewable energy in the national electricity mix to 52% by 2030.
