Emirates invest in African green hydrogen

Abu Dhabi National Energy Company TAQA plans to build a green hydrogen production facility in Western Sahara. It will invest $10 billion in the 6 GW Moroccan project.

The project is reportedly set to be located in the Dakhla-Oued Eddahab region, which is geographically situated in Western Sahara—considered a “non-self-governing territory” by the UN.

Morocco, however, considers Dakhla-Oued Eddahab one of its 12 administrative regions, based on a pledge of allegiance to the kingdom made by local officials in 1979. The region is highly attractive to electrolyser investors, as Hydrogen Insight reports.

Further investment in the region

An anonymous source at Morocco’s Ministry of Investment told the Asharq newspaper that the region had attracted projects worth a total of 220 billion dirhams ($60 billion).

These include the 8 GW White Dunes project, expected to cost around $2 billion, which Moroccan investment holding company Falcon Capital Dakhla and French developer HDF Energy launched in November last year.

In addition to Dakhla, Total Eren, a subsidiary of TotalEnergies, bought 170,000 hectares of land from the Moroccan government in the administrative region of Guelmim-Oued Noun for a $27 billion project that will use 10 GW of installed wind and solar capacity.

Developer CWP Global has also unveiled plans to build a large-scale facility to produce ammonia from renewable energy, using 15 GW of installed wind and solar capacity, in the city of Tan-Tan in the region.

Moroccan state-owned fertiliser giant OCP has pledged to invest $7 billion in a green ammonia plant with an annual capacity of one million tonnes in the city of Tarfaya, which is due to start operating in 2027. It will also invest $1.5 billion from its balance sheet to build a pilot green ammonia plant with an annual capacity of 200,000 tonnes at its existing site next to the port of Jorf Lasfar, scheduled to begin operations in 2026.

Political framework

Many of these facilities, however, are still at an early stage of development. International companies are holding off on final investment decisions until the government’s hydrogen offering is published.

This set of policies, which is expected to cover the allocation of land and infrastructure for green hydrogen production facilities, is still being prepared, although Turkey’s state news agency Anadolu Agency reported that it should be published later this year.