MOROCCO – Dubai-based AMEA Power has won a contract to build two solar power plants in Morocco as the North African country continues to boost its renewables portfolio.
The solar projects are part of a large international tender launched by the Moroccan Agency for Sustainable Energy (Masen) and the Ministry of Energy Transition and Sustainable Development.
The company tends to construct the first phase of the multi-site solar energy Noor PV II programme, which has a total capacity of 330 megawatts.
As part of the contract, AMEA Power will build two solar plants with a capacity of 36 megawatts each, at Taroudant, in the Souss-Massa region, and in El Hajeb, in the Fes-Meknes region.
“The Noor PV II programme supports Morocco’s target to increase its renewables share to 52 per cent by 2030,” said AMEA Power’s chairman Hussain Al Nowais.
“We look forward to supporting the country in achieving its objective and diversifying its energy mix.”
The award of the new contract comes as countries around the world continue to focus on building new renewable plants to cut emissions.
Global renewable generation capacity rose 9 per cent to 3,064 gigawatts in 2021 amid the green transition push, a report by the International Renewable Energy Agency.
Morocco aims to attract about US$30 billion in investment to its energy sector by 2030 and hopes to add 10 gigawatts of renewable capacity and develop a liquefied natural gas plant to meet its growing power needs.
The North African country has emerged as one of the leading proponents of renewable energy in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) over the past five years, having successfully launched and developed some of the largest solar schemes in the region.
The state’s progress with developing clean energy is part of its strategy to reduce its historical reliance on energy imports.
In 2009, the government set a target for renewables to contribute to 42 per cent of total power production by 2020.
Following the successful launch of its Noor PV programme in 2017, Rabat set a target for 52 percent of its energy requirements to come from clean energy sources by 2030.
AMEA Power, which currently produces about 2,000 megawatts of clean energy through solar and wind energy plants in 15 countries, plans to raise its output to 5,000MW in the next three years.
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