A shining example of green energy in Morocco

Think of bustling souks and bazaars with hawkers shouting their wares, tables piled high with silks and spices, and rich smells of cooking wafting through the hot, arid air.

As we visualize the country Morocco, all these clichés may spring to mind — a reflection of the highly successful Government-backed campaign to turn this North African country into a tourist destination. Today, Morocco is the most visited country in Africa.

But, tourism still only makes up one-fifth of the Moroccan economy. To create sustainable, inclusive growth for its 35 million people, the Moroccan Government recognizes that it needs more than tourism.

Currently, around 45% of the working population are still employed in agriculture, despite this only driving around 12% of GDP. Manufacturing, mining and textile production are all growth areas in Morocco, with huge potential. But, with energy making up between 3% and 30% of manufacturing costs, depending on the industry, access to affordable and reliable energy has been a significant factor in industrial investment decisions in developing economies, such as Morocco’s, for years.

To compound this, Morocco is heavily dependent on fossil fuel imports. Its economy is hostage to fluctuations in energy prices and the volatility of these costs have been limiting its potential for growth.

The question the Moroccan Government began to ask, inspired by the ecologically minded king himself, was: could sustainable energy be a way to lay the foundations for sustainable economic growth? With renewable energy long seen as expensive, unreliable and intermittent (wind turbines are unable to generate power on a calm day, solar panels are useless at night, etc.), and most renewable energy tech requiring huge amounts of investment – until very recently, the answer would simply have been “no.” No emerging market has developed using renewable energy so far – but that could be about to change.

How can renewable be reliable?

The only question was how to turn this dream into reality at scale. After all, renewable energy may be clean — but when the wind stops blowing, wind turbines stop turning; and when the sun sets, solar panels stop generating. How could renewable energy give Morocco the reliable energy it needed to fuel its economic growth?

Solving this challenge fell to Masen, which in turn brought in EY to consult on strategy and delivery. “A key part of our work is helping governments procure and develop large-scale infrastructure,” explains Auton-Smith. “For us, the reason we get out of bed in the morning is to work on globally significant, first-of-a-kind projects that can really move the needle, and this is one of those projects.”

This shared sense of enthusiasm and a desire to build a better working world through finding ways to deliver reliable renewable energy in a way that would boost economic growth was quickly recognized by Masen, which has subsequently engaged us on a follow-up project in Midelt in central Morocco.

Building renewable energy capacity that could supply energy needs after dark would both help lower Morocco’s energy costs and dependency on fuel imports. This alone would increase the ability of businesses like Cherkaoui Zahra’s to grow by reducing costs, but this wasn’t ambitious enough for the project triumvirate – Masen, Morocco and our team of experienced professionals.

“The Moroccan Government views the renewable energy program as a key way to build business, manufacturing and engineering skills, and capacity within the country,” Auton-Smith explains. As such, although much of the expertise for such a complex project came from overseas specialists, detailed analysis by our Paris-based cleantech and sustainability team found that at least 35% of the equipment and labor could be manufactured and sourced from within Morocco, which soon became an official target — one that was eventually exceeded by some 5%.

“The ability of the plant to generate electricity at the level forecast is fundamental to its ability to repay its debt, reward its shareholders and remain financially viable,” says Auton-Smith. “Therefore, a very significant part of our work was in evaluating what those risks were and how they could be effectively managed.

“Working with the engineering team, we undertook a series of detailed performance scenarios to assess what impact each would have on the plant’s ability to produce the required output. Financing a project of this magnitude, on a tight timeframe in North Africa, is not an easy task but our team came up with a structure designed to protect the interests of both Masen and the private lenders supporting the plant.”

The approach was both innovative and effective, making the most of the ability of Government to borrow at low interest rates to help reduce capital uncertainty for private contractors, while protecting both buyers and sellers from unexpected price fluctuations of the end product: the energy the plant would produce.

As a public company, Masen had many roles in the project. “First, as a public company, Masen mobilizes financing from different international financial institutions and repackages the debt into one credit line to relend it to the project company,” explains Boutaina Benchekroun, Project Development Specialist at Masen. “Mobilizing this ‘cheaper’ financing from international financial institutions significantly reduces the tariff compared to conventional financing.”

“Second,” she continues, “Masen purchases electricity from the project company and resells it to the Moroccan utility company, thus guaranteeing a revenue to the project company.”

This financing approach helped protect both the Moroccan Government from the risk of the project not delivering and gave the private contractors access to finance at a much lower interest rate than they could achieve if operating independently. This reduced the overall cost of the project, lowering the risk and reassuring all parties. It could serve as a model for future large-scale infrastructure projects in other emerging markets.

“This project is very important for the people of Morocco,” says Tarik Bourquouquou. “A lot of families are benefitting from this work. Energy will become a more available and flexible resource for Morocco. This is a source of pride, I think, for everybody, both in Masen and for everyone involved in the projects.”

While Noor Ouarzazate II and Noor Ouarzazate III – the two biggest plants at the Noor Ouarzazate site – have yet to come online and start supplying energy to the Moroccan national electricity grid, their potential impact can be seen by looking around the country. Ten years ago, regular PV solar cells would have been too expensive for many ordinary people in Morocco to afford. But, due to investment in the technology around the world, the cost has fallen dramatically in recent years. The hope is that Noor Ouarzazate will prove the potential of CSP, leading to more investment and thus future falls in cost.

Expanding the reliability, availability and affordability of energy supplies in Morocco is fundamental to the country’s future economic growth. With many families still living in poverty — and a large population under the age of 30 looking for employment — laying the foundations of modern infrastructure is key. Here, electricity and internet connectivity are vital tools to enable options for overcoming other infrastructure challenges for communities in the most remote parts of the developing world.

A decade ago, PV solar cells were too expensive for a family like the Aït Mrims to afford. Thanks to rising investment in the technology, costs have come down, and photovoltaic solar has become both more cost-effective than coal and more affordable. This is already helping drive down energy costs for everyone from the main mosque in Marrakech to telecoms companies, as well as giving access to electricity in some of the most remote communities on earth.

“There's a continuous issue in major infrastructure projects about how much risk you can transfer, what is the price of that risk transfer, how real is it?” says Auton-Smith. For innovative infrastructure projects like Noor Ouarzazate, overcoming aversion to those risks is a significant challenge.

"The price of renewables used to be higher than conventional sources of energy, so one of the biggest challenges for Noor Ouarzazate is to get this price down so we can fight climate change," says Benchekroun.

Noor Ouarzazate is designed to prove that CSP plants can really work, and that heat-based solar can deliver reliable renewable energy even when the sun’s not shining. It’s intended to reduce energy costs to give an emerging economy a stronger foundation from which to grow. But, it’s also about using a major construction and engineering project to develop local skills at the same time as improving infrastructure — and sharing that knowledge with others from around the world who want to embark on similar projects in future.

All of this is why so many multilateral lenders wanted to be involved, and why so many organizations from around the world are taking such a great interest in Noor Ouarzazate’s success — something Masen and EY are keen to encourage.

Today, this technology may be expensive, but — thanks to projects like Noor Ouarzazate — in 10 years’ time, the world may be seeing a lot more of this kind of solar plant, reducing carbon emissions, boosting economies, helping communities and families, and driving inclusive growth.

Without collaboration, vision and partnerships — the vision of a king, the finances of multilateral lenders, the security of public oversight by Masen, and the delivery of a combination of foreign and domestic private contractors, aided by the services provided by our experienced team of consultants and risk managers — the project, which is due to start producing electricity in the summer of 2018, might never have got off the ground.

“The sheer diversity of our people involved and its global nature make this a shining example of the services EY provides to our clients,” says Auton-Smith.

The Noor Ouarzazate project demonstrates that some of the world’s biggest challenges can only truly be addressed through taking the big-picture view. As Amrane puts it, “this is not just an energy project; it is a project that, while certainly about energy, is also an environmental project and an industrial project — it is about how to produce, how to consume and how to do politics differently.”

It is exactly this kind of new thinking and collaboration in pursuit of a common goal between public and private sectors that we need if we are to build a better working world.