The plan would flow clean power from the Moroccan desert to SpainPhotograph: amerune/Flickr
The Desertec Industrial Initiative (DII) has been forced to postpone the announcement of a political framework supporting its first project – a 150MW concentrating solar power (CSP) plant in Morocco – because Spain has not yet agreed to the details.
It is unclear why Spain has not yet signed-off on the long-planned memorandum of understanding (MoU) that will lay out the rules governing the importation of clean electricity from Morocco to Europe, a DII spokesman tells Recharge.
The negotiations surrounding the MOU are happening behind closed doors, and DII is not directly involved. All the other countries privy to the agreement – Germany, Morocco, France, Italy, Malta and Luxembourg – are ready to sign up, the spokesman says.
He adds that a high-level Moroccan official recently indicated that the MOU would be unveiled this week at DII’s annual conference in Berlin. But without the participation of Spain – the country where the CSP-generated electricity will make landfall in Europe – the deal cannot go forward.
“The expectation was that this would all be finished during this conference,” the spokesman acknowledges. “We now hope to have the declaration in hand in a few weeks.”
Despite fears that last year’s “Arab Spring” would damage the prospects for DII, the group continues to roll its plans forward as originally envisaged, aided in part by surging interest in large-scale renewables across North Africa.
In September the Moroccan government named Saudi Arabia’s ACWA Power as preferred bidder for a 160MW CSP plant at Ouarzazate, in the country’s sun-blistered centre. That project is separate from the 150MW “reference project” DII is backing in the same location.
DII has also helped RWE Innogy, a subsidiary of the German utility, prepare its own plans for a 100MW PV/wind hybrid plant in Morocco.
Karl-Erik Stromsta, London
Published: Wednesday, November 7 2012
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