The International Financing Corporation (IFC) has signed a deal with Moroccan state-owned phosphate mining and fertiliser producer OCP Group to partially finance 400MW worth of solar PV.
Split across two sites and due to be paired with up to 100MWh of battery energy storage, the 400MW will provide power to OCP Group’s operations in the mining towns of Benguerir and Khouribga, the homes of the largest phosphate reserves on earth.
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The IFC – the private sector arm of the World Bank – will invest €100 million (US$106 million) into the projects through a green loan, just under a third of the total €360 million required. This deal builds on an initial €100 million that the IFC loaned to OCP Group in April this year for 202MWp of Moroccan solar. As with the capacity from April, construction will be handled by OCP Green Energy, the phosphate company’s renewables generation subsidiary.
The IFC said that the project would be the first large-scale solar-plus-storage project in Morocco and the largest such project in North Africa.
“Today’s agreement is a major milestone towards our target of using 100% renewable energy in our fertiliser production by 2027”, said OCP Group chairman and CEO Mostafa Terrab. “Our deepening collaboration with IFC reflects our alignment on the urgency of addressing the global challenges of food security and climate change simultaneously”.
Morocco has high solar irradiance and an abundance of suitable land for PV deployments. The state-owned Moroccan Agency for Sustainable Energy opened a 400MW solar-plus-storage tender earlier this year for the third phase of the Noor Midelt project, which will ultimately boast 1.6GW capacity upon completion. The first phase was developed by Middle-Eastern energy giant Masdar.
Regarding overseas investment into Morocco’s solar market, PV Tech Premium recently published a feature examining the possibility of transferring power from North Africa to Europe, an idea that has already seen some progress following the EU’s funding for a 600MW transmission line between Tunisia and Italy.