In this exclusive interview with GreenTimes, Dr. Said GUEMRA, an expert in energy transition, discusses the challenges and opportunities related to Morocco’s strategic choices in this field. He emphasizes the importance of the royal vision, initiated in 2009, to reduce the country’s energy dependence and achieve a carbon-neutral electricity mix by 2050. However, he highlights regulatory gaps, low private sector involvement, and the multiplicity of actors, which hinder efficiency and innovation. According to him, priority should be given to energy efficiency, which offers substantial savings, before making massive investments in renewables. Simplifying governance and creating incentive-based regulations are essential to accelerate this crucial transition.
How do you assess Morocco’s current choices regarding energy transition, particularly their real impact on sustainability and energy independence?
Morocco’s choices regarding energy transition have been defined at the level of the energy transition plan initiated by His Majesty the King in 2009. This transition plan is based on energy efficiency as a national priority, and economically viable renewable energies, with the freedom to design the future carbon-neutral electricity mix, including nuclear electricity production. Thus, this energy transition plan aims for the Kingdom’s energy independence by 2050, at least for national electricity production; hydrogen can provide the complement, especially for transport. The priority is to reduce our energy dependence rate, currently at 90%, to something like 14% by 2050. In 2023, renewables represent no more than 10% of our energy mix. We measure the distance left to achieve net-zero electricity by 2050, with Morocco being a signatory to the Paris agreements. In this context, it should be noted that Morocco cannot plan for 100% renewable electricity, and the reasonable limit that can be planned for 2050 would be 50% to 65% of the expected consumption in 2050, which would be around 107 TWh/year; the rest must be supplemented by nuclear, hydrogen, little hydropower, self-production, and biomass. Self-production in households and industry, where we aim to have a share of 10 to 15% of our future electricity mix, assumes favorable regulation, which is not the case today. In many countries, small self-productions constitute a significant source of clean energy; countries like Germany or Australia have 3 to 4 million self-production installations due to very encouraging regulations. Achieving our electrical independence: no longer importing primary energy for our electricity production by 2050, through renewables and low-carbon technologies: nuclear, requires us to maintain a pace of 700 to 800 MW of large renewables per year, and establish more than 2 million small self-production installations between 2025 and 2050, or 80,000 installations per year and an investment of 3.2 billion dirhams/year. This is the trajectory that can ensure us 15% of renewables in production in our electricity mix by 2050. By 2050, we must start at 800 MW/year for large projects, 400 MW/year for low/medium voltage self-production, totaling 1200 MW/year, and an annual investment predominantly from the private sector of 13.2 billion dirhams/year, or 330 billion dirhams over 25 years. This trajectory will allow us to cover our future electricity demand by more than 65% with renewables. If we adopt roughly the same cost for the remaining 35% for nuclear and hydrogen, our electrical transition will cost between 50 and 60 billion dollars by 2050. Due to the current lack of regulation, we are obviously very far from both trajectories, for both large projects and small self-production projects.
Is the current regulation sufficiently incentive to encourage private investments and innovation in the renewable energy sector?
In fact, as of today, we have a situation of non-regulation. The only regulation that works is related to part of law 13-09, which allows private entities within the framework of large projects. Even this part of law 13-09 faces difficulties; according to the Competition Council, 98 projects under 13-09 have not been authorized, generally due to a lack of capacity, which contradicts the report from ANRE stating that the capacity would be 7,236 MW, more than enough to cover the 98 requests. As a result, private investments represent only 7% of installed capacity in 2023, with three operators in 15 years. This is an incomprehensible situation; the state does not have the means to do everything, which is almost an exclusion of the private sector. If in 2023 we are at 21% renewables in our electricity mix, simulations show that we could have been over 40% renewables in our electricity mix (not to be confused with installed capacity). On the side of other voltage levels: medium and low, there are three laws: 58-15, 40-19, and 82-21, which do not have application decrees to date; that’s why I say we are in a situation of non-regulation. We see photovoltaic installations here and there, but which are not governed by any law. Even if these laws apply, particularly 82-21, they contain a large number of obstacles, which, coupled with the limitation of medium voltage with the envelope decree, leave no chance for self-production projects.
What do you think are the main operational and financial barriers to be lifted to accelerate the implementation of energy efficiency and renewable energy projects in Morocco?
If a middle ground is found between electricity distributors, as this is the crux of the blockage of renewables, and household and business users, the regulatory framework can be unlocked, and the energy transition in our country can be accelerated. More than 20 years ago, financiers said that investing in energy efficiency was a risk; at the time, there were no renewables. Today, these same financiers have set up a multitude of green economy financing lines, but there are no projects to finance, or very few. Industrial companies are full of opportunities for energy efficiency and renewable energy; the prohibition of injection into the grid can lead to a loss of more than 45% of solar production in a company; we published the case of a Moroccan industrialist who was losing 60% of his solar production. If law 82-21 is applied, the distributor will pay 20% of the production and benefit for free from the remaining 25%; this is a law that cannot be applied and needs a large number of decrees. The same delay is observed in energy efficiency; the goal was to achieve a 20% savings over the period 2020-2030. Our energy bill was 153 billion dirhams in 2022, meaning that 1% savings on the bill can represent a savings of 1.53 billion dirhams. With the few actions taken by AMEE, we cannot demonstrate according to the rules of measurement and verification, a savings of 1% per year. How can we achieve 20% by 2030?
The issue of energy efficiency remains entirely on the table, and a solution is needed; it is the first pillar of our energy transition, which can yield double the savings obtained with renewables, with significantly lower financing. We are therefore missing out on a tremendous lever for our transition. We must return to the year 2017, when His Majesty the King received the prestigious Energy Efficiency Visionary Award for this synergy he presented between energy efficiency and renewable energies. In practice, it is not uncommon to achieve a 50% savings thanks to efficiency and energy efficiency techniques, so investment in renewables is done at half the expected cost for renewables. This is the foundation of our energy transition, with energy efficiency as a priority, which explains the granting of this award to His Majesty in 2017, rewarding his vision established since 2009, when many developed countries did not have an energy transition plan. It should be noted that this royal vision is a very advanced concept for its time and has been adopted by the IPCC and many countries, including European ones. This royal vision is a source of pride for all Moroccan professionals in the field of energy transition: to reduce consumption to the maximum with energy efficiency as a priority, before considering renewables.
Does the current energy governance architecture allow for effective coordination among the various public and private actors?
The short answer is no. A large number of reports highlight the multiplicity of actors in the energy sector. You have MASEN, ONEE, AMEE, SIE, Ministries, ANRE, Distributors, the Ministry of the Interior… each of these actors has a small part of the decision-making in energy matters. In the case of a request for authorization, a draft decree dated July 27, 2023, establishes commissions, whereas the only concerned party is indeed the distributor who can decide whether the renewable project can be carried out or not. In Tunisia, the request is addressed to STEG, the sole interlocutor, who processes it and grants the authorization in 15 days with the installation of the bi-directional meter, and the project can start on day 16.
On the power side, the threshold of 11 kW cannot be exceeded according to this same decree, which means in the case of a villa, no more. An apartment building that would need 30 to 40 kW cannot be authorized; this means that all buildings in Morocco, which present the greatest potential for solar self-production, are eliminated; collective self-production is nonexistent in the texts. The multiplicity of actors in renewable investment, coupled with unimplementable and very complex legal texts, has hindered the progress of our energy transition. It is therefore imperative to design simple regulations, a single window for renewables, regardless of power, otherwise we will continue to operate at a slow pace of renewables at 200 MW/year for the past 15 years, whereas to achieve our goal by 2050, we need to be on a trajectory of 1200 MW of renewables per year. The target for 2030 is 52% of the electricity mix, while we are at 21% in 2023. At this pace, and excluding low and medium voltage from renewables, we will be at best at 32% renewables in our electricity mix by 2030, a projected delay of 20 points.
Among the available renewable solutions, which stand out for their competitiveness and relevance in the Moroccan context?
In Morocco, the two adopted solutions are wind and photovoltaic, exclusively apart from the CSP of Ouarzazate. There are, of course, several technologies that can contribute to producing more renewable electricity. First, we find hydrogen fuel cells, which can have a multitude of applications in Morocco, both in industry and in buildings. Its use will depend on the cost of hydrogen available on the Moroccan market. We can envision charging future electric vehicles with this technology, hoping for improved yields, and thus charging costs within the reach of Moroccans; the advantage lies in not relying on the electrical grid, which remains highly carbon-intensive, while avoiding excessive charging powers compared to the capacity of our electrical grid. A second technology relates to electricity production from biomass and biogas. Our country has a tremendous biomass potential estimated at 115 TWh/year. Denmark produces over 23% of its electricity from biomass; this country, considered the world champion of energy transition, is at 83.2% renewables in its electricity mix (energy report). The wish would be to produce at least 5%, or more, of our electricity by 2050 from biomass and biogas, by developing rural biomass treatment stations. The development of biomass on a national scale will allow us to introduce a third technology, which is biomass cogeneration in industry, enabling industrialists to produce their own green electricity, but also decarbonizing thermal energy, currently dominated by fuel oil 2, a major polluter. These are the three main renewable technologies, which are not intermittent, technologically mastered, and seem very promising for our country.
Otherwise, we must urgently industrialize small and medium wind from 1 to 50 kW for a multitude of applications and scale up thereafter. All these developments remain dependent on the regulatory framework. We thus hope for new laws favorable to renewables that can advance our energy transition in a much more dynamic manner.