UK Firm Plans $100bn Solar Farms in Morocco

A delegation made up of around twenty British investors arrived in Dakhla, Western Sahara on July 18th for a two-day prospecting mission led by Brannan Tempest, whose British firm is planning to build mega solar farms in Dakhla and Laâyoune for an investment exceeding 100 billion dollars, reports a number of Moroccan media outlets.

In April, Maghrebi reported on a similar investment made up of UK companies and UAE investment totalling around $37m and creating an expected 10,000 jobs.

According to the more recent reports these projects in Western Sahara will be much bigger investments and will be carried out by the Oblin Group, through its subsidiary OblinGreen, which will also offer employment opportunities to a large number of students in renewable energies who will integrate the new university facilities in Dakhla for training courses of 3 to 6 months. The projects themselves are expected to generate around 5000 jobs locally.

Composed of around twenty investors from different sectors (green energy, tech, real estate, tourism, etc.), the British delegation was welcomed by the main decision-makers in the region, headed by the Wali of Dakhla-Oued Eddahab, Lamine Benomar, and the President of the Regional Council, Yanja El Khattat, according to L’Opinion .

The exchanges mainly focused on highlighting the development dynamics that the region is experiencing in various fields, as part of a Moroccan program totalling 4.36bn dh (around $44m).

UK Oblin group, which builds and operates hybrid utility scale solar, wind, hydro, biomass, waste to energy power stations, will carry out a major green hydrogen project in the Moroccan Saharan Dakhla-Oued Eddahab region.

“We are planning a major renewable energy project to produce green hydrogen and ammonia in Morocco’s southern provinces,” he said. “We are ready to launch our project expected to create 5,000 jobs,” underlined Mr. Tempest.

Remarkably, for the first time ever, solar panels and wind turbine blades will be made in Morocco as part of the investment.