A year after announcing its mega-project for the production of green hydrogen in Morocco, the French group Total Energies is taking the plunge by structuring the first milestones of the financing of its subsidiary TotalEnergies Renewable Maroc Assetco (TERMA), the Moroccan entity that will eventually hold the assets of this project worth more than 11 billion dollars (more than 100 billion dirhams!).
The world’s fourth largest hydrocarbon producer has just raised TERMA’s capital from 9 million dirhams to more than 10.7 billion dirhams as part of a massive and progressive injection that will take place over three years. Such an operation embodies the best guarantee from the top management of the Total Energies group regarding its willingness to complete its green hydrogen and ammonia project in Morocco and more specifically in Guelmim-Oued Noun. The release of the first tranche of financing also marks the end of doubt as to the real willingness of the Moroccan executive to fully commit to the release of the land base intended for this project which extends over a gigantic area of 170,000 hectares.
This means that the TERMA project is on the right track, even if the initial schedule of the project designers, to have an entry into the active phase as early as 2025, will most likely be shifted by at least one year. However, this outcome remains a tremendous signal for the global supply of green hydrogen, promising many opportunities for employment and the decarbonization of major sectors. The first electricity production by TERMA was expected for 2027, with the ambition of establishing a local energy market of 4 terawatt hours (TWh) and an export market of 10 TWh by 2030.
