By Nabil Adghoghi*
Morocco plays a strategic role in the global food security and is now one of the world’s leading phosphate fertilizer suppliers.
At the same time, the county has implemented its energy transition with an increase of renewable energies to 52% of the national energy mix by 2030, a competitive position in the decarbonized economy and the development of green hydrogen.
In the fertilizer sector, Morocco tripled its production capacity from 2008 to 2021, from 4 million tonnes to 12 million tonnes a year, with a turnover that went from USD 2.5 billion in 2005 to over USD 13 billion in 2022.
For the next period, the country is adapting to the major transformations experienced by the global fertilizer industry, marked both by the prioritization of sustainable agriculture and the central role of food security in the world geopolitics and the emergence of new industrial and digital technologies.
To speed up this process, state-owned OCP Group is launching a new growth strategy to start producing “green fertilizers” adapted to the specific needs of different types of soils and crops, thus contributing to the agricultural green revolution and global food security.
In this regard, the 2023-2027 project that the OCP Group has put forward on December 3, 2022, to His Majesty King Mohammed VI aims at increasing fertilizer output, reaching carbon neutrality by 2040, and using 100% of renewable energies.
At a total investment of USD 13 billion, this new program will allow to increase fertilizer production from 12 million tonnes to 20 million tonnes in 2027 and power the group’s industrial infrastructure with green energy by 2027, particularly with new desalination capacities.
Even more important, this investment will allow OCP, which is now the world’s largest ammonia importer, to get free of imports through investments on green hydrogen — green ammonia, which will allow the company to dive headfirst in the global green fertilizer market.
At last, the R&D component of this new program features several research centers created within the Mohammed VI Polytechnic University like the Green Energy Park (GEP), which specializes in renewable energies, and Material Science, Energy and Nano-Engineering (MSN), which specializes in lithium iron phosphate battery components, Innov’X, as well as a data center that now allows the OCP Group to be in the center of digital revolutions in agriculture and respond to the challenges of sustainable agriculture and food security.
In short, Morocco’s ambition to be a global leader in fertilizers matches the commitment of the country to implement public policies in the areas of energy mix, green economy and low carbon.
This commitment, implemented under the leadership of His Majesty King Mohammed VI, has been boosted since 2016, when Morocco hosted COP22, an occasion when the country launched a series of voluntary public policies in several areas related to the energy mix, green hydrogen production and usage being the most recent and emblematic of these public policies.
In fact, Morocco emerges as one of the countries that are best poised for green hydrogen production, as it has a huge potential of energy resources through different investments in solar parks and can benefit from a deal that is expected to generate 30 to 60 million tonnes a year by 2050.
The latest Renewable Energy Country Attractiveness Index (RECAI), which ranks the world’s top markets on the attractiveness of their renewable energy sector, has put the Kingdom of Morocco in the world’s first place! Several indicators demonstrate how the country aims to consolidate its lead in global food security, whilst emerging as a key player in renewable energy and green economy.
*Nabil Adghoghi is the ambassador of Morocco to Brazil
The opinions expressed in the articles are those of the authors.
Translated by Guilherme Miranda
