The Minister of Energy Transition and Sustainable Development, Leila Benali, indicated Tuesday to the House of Advisors that her Department is supporting private sector projects to increase additional storage capacities for petroleum products to 1.8 million cubic meters. by 2030, the equivalent of 41 additional days of national consumption.
In response to an oral question on “Strengthening the energy supply in the Kingdom”, Ms. Benali indicated that the investment cost of these projects amounts to 5 billion dirhams, which will make it possible to create more than 3 600 direct jobs and thousands of indirect jobs.
Furthermore, she indicated that electricity production capacity from renewable sources reached 5,300 megawatts at the end of last August, an increase of 7.3% during the current government mandate, noting that wind energy has, for the first time, surpassed hydropower in terms of electricity production.
Projects linked to renewable energies contributed to 1/5 of the national demand for electricity, noted the minister, specifying that her department issued, during half of the government mandate, authorizations to private operators for a capacity exceeding 2 gigawatts, which constitutes the largest capacity ever granted by the ministry.
In this sense, Ms. Benali stressed that the ministry has carried out reforms to reduce the cost of electricity production through several competitive investments, adding that the cost of production of renewable energies, including batteries, does not exceed today 0.40 dirham per kilowatt hour.
She also specified that the rate of investments in renewable energies has multiplied by five, going from 3.5 billion dirhams per year before 2021 to 15 billion dirhams per year after 2023, noting that the value of programmed investments rises at 30 billion dirhams, in addition to the investment relating to the electrical interconnection line with a capacity of 3 gigawatts between the south and the center of the Kingdom.
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