Morocco presented Monday, November 2, in Ouarzazate (250 km south-east of Marrakech), an ambitious production of solar electricity production, which will have a capacity of 2,000 megawatts (MW) and will represent an investment of 9 billion dollars.

According to AFP, the project will be located in five locations, to be completed by 2020 and all of them will cover 10,000 hectares. One plant will be located right at Ouarzazate and will have a capacity of 500 MW and the other four will have a capacity of 100 to 500 MW.

After being done, this project will lead to annual savings of one million tons of oil equivalent of 500 million dollars and CO2 emissions of Morocco will be reduced by 3.7 million tons annually, said Minister of Energy and Mines, Amina Benkhadra.

“United (Morocco) has an enormous potential for solar energy, with (...) 3,000 hours of sunshine a year, said Benkhadra. Project will be realized both from government and private national and foreign funds. Morocco is forced to import most of the power supply, especially from the Middle East, paying, in 2008, over 6 billion dollars for these facilities, so that it doesn't benefit of oil and gas resources.”

In 2020, after the completion of the project, Morocco will be able to provide 42% of electricity needs.

Source: www.ecomagazin.ro