Moroccan and foreign developers have floated 40 proposals to produce green hydrogen and its derivatives for Morocco’s domestic and export markets in response to a request for proposals issued by the Moroccan Agency for Sustainable Energy (MASEN) earlier this year, the government announced on Thursday after a meeting of the Steering Committee tasked with evaluating the proposals.
Morocco first announced that it would accept bids in April 2024 and allocated a whopping one million hectares to the projects of investors looking to bank on the country’s rising green hydrogen industry.
At Thursday’s meeting, the committee came up with a preliminary shortlist of potential investor projects.
The selected projects are primarily in the the Kingdom’s three southern regions of Guelmim-Oued Noun, Laayoune-Sakia El Hamra, and Dakhla-Oued Ed-Dahab. The committee will discuss individual projects with their developers.
The Steering Committee is reviewing the contractual framework for the public land allocated for these projects, focusing on mechanisms to ensure its optimal use.
The meeting follows a previous one in which the committee discussed the methodology to be used in evaluating and selecting project proposals from among those MASEN has received.