The global sprint to net-zero remains hobbled by an inconvenient truth: Elemental hydrogen, the fuel of tomorrow’s heavy industry and shipping, is a logistics nightmare. It embrittles steel, leaks through the finest of seals, and boils off uncontrollably during maritime transit. Moreover, carrying pure hydrogen across seas in cryogenic tankers eats up nearly a third of the energy it contains.
If it was to be shuttled between continents, something had to change. That change, liquid green ammonia, has since become the carrier of choice. Besides the relative ease of transport it offers, it also packs more hydrogen per cubic meter than liquid hydrogen, and slides into existing fertilizer logistics and port infrastructure with ease.
For North Africa, a region that is fractured by geopolitics but blessed with sun, wind and gas, this means being at the epicenter of an energy shift that could funnel hundreds of billions of dollars into the region’s economies over the next quarter of a century. The potential windfall is enormous, yet prevailing internal dynamics suggest the region could just as easily burn through the very resources needed to sustain its own populations.
At present, the Maghreb absorbs approximately twice the solar radiation per square meter that southern Spain receives. A single square kilometer of Sahara desert in Morocco or Algeria can host photovoltaic arrays that yield more than 250 gigawatt-hours of electricity a year, enough to produce about 5,000 tonnes of green ammonia.
Furthermore, the costs of renewable electricity in the region have already reached a threshold where green ammonia becomes a competitive alternative to natural gas, once carbon pricing kicks in. Already there are projections that electrolyzer installations in North Africa could swell to 25 gigawatts by 2035, positioning the region as the planet’s second-largest green ammonia export basin after the Australian outback.
Secondly, natural gas serves as an imperfect springboard. Algeria’s proven reserves of more than 4.5 trillion cubic meters offer a transitional formula: blue ammonia, produced by conventional steam methane reforming, with carbon capture and storage bolted on. Algerian state-owned giant Sonatrach has already mapped out a million-tonne-per-year blue ammonia plant at Arzew, repurposing liquefied natural gas terminals to ship ammonia to European buyers who are desperate for near-term decarbonization.
Blending hydrogen gradually into the existing Transmed and Medgaz pipelines, starting at 5 to 10 percent by volume, promises to keep Europe tethered to Algerian gas networks for another two decades, even as the molecule that is being burned shifts.
Internal dynamics suggest the region could burn through the very resources needed to sustain its own populations.
Hafed Al-Ghwell
Yet blending comes with severe technical ceilings. Beyond a 15 percent hydrogen share, pipeline steel integrity diminishes, compressors need replacing, and the resulting energy content values fall below the contractual norms that keep European power plants humming. Algeria’s pathway therefore marries genuine decarbonization ambitions with a hard-nosed desire to preserve the rentier model built on gas exports.
Morocco, which imports nearly all its hydrocarbons, has chosen the opposite strategy. Its “Offre Maroc” national investment strategy for the green hydrogen sector has carved out 300,000 hectares of state land for renewable hydrogen and ammonia consortia, attracting heavyweights such as TotalEnergies, CWP Global, and Fortescue. The driver here is not only energy exports but an existential need for Morocco to green its own phosphate empire.
Elsewhere, the Office Cherifien des Phosphates, also known as OCP Group, is embarking on a $10 billion program to build 12 gigawatts of dedicated solar and wind capacity, paired with 2 gigawatts of electrolysis, which aims to produce 200,000 tonnes of green ammonia this year and 3 million tonnes by 2030. The Jorf Hydrogen Platform and the Chbika-1 mega-project in the Guelmim-Oued Noun region of Morocco are all part of the state-led efforts to convert phosphate wealth into green industrial muscle, bypassing pipeline geopolitics entirely and sending liquid ammonia out through Atlantic ports such as Laayoune and Jorf Lasfar.
The resulting duel in the Maghreb is one of the most underappreciated fault lines in the world’s energy transition; Morocco and Algeria are racing to build redundant desalination plants, separate port loading arms for ammonia carriers, and competing high-voltage corridors to ship electrons from the desert to electrolyzers on the coast.
Yet behind the spreadsheets and project pipeline announcements lurks an unsettling reality about who pays for the green windfall, and with what consequences.
A world-scale green ammonia plant producing a million tonnes a year consumes about 10 million to 12 million cubic meters of water annually, almost all of which must come from desalination in a region that is experiencing high-to-extremely-high water stress. In addition, brine discharge from desalination plants into the Atlantic, heated and laden with chemicals, risks damaging the very fisheries that employ tens of thousands of people along the Moroccan coast. Similarly, Algeria’s planned mega-desalination complex at Cap Blanc faces opposition from civil society groups wary of handing over coastal water to a state-owned energy complex while interior provinces contend with recurrent supply cuts.
Equally delicate is the question of power diversion. Morocco’s ambitious ammonia rollout implies the building of about 15 gigawatts of dedicated renewables by 2035, an amount approaching the country’s entire current installed electricity capacity. Even if these are additional green electrons, the transmission grid must absorb them and the industrial pull risks delaying the decommissioning of the coal-fired plants that still supply a third of domestic power.
The same dynamic plays out in Algeria, where Sonelgaz aims to add 15 gigawatts of solar by 2035 but faces a grid that bleeds more than 15 percent of transmitted electricity in losses. Diverting a growing share of renewable output to export-oriented ammonia risks cannibalizing the electricity needed for domestic industrialization, all while citizens bear the environmental costs of the land and water inputs.
The silver lining, if it emerges, is that the sheer magnitude of demand will allow both Morocco and Algeria to succeed without having to resolve their bitter rivalry. Global ammonia trade could quadruple to 250 million tonnes by 2050, driven by the shipping of fuel, power generation co-firing (the simultaneous burning of two different fuels in the same combustion system) in Asia, and the decarbonization of fertilizers needed to feed a projected population of 10 billion people.
North Africa, with a potential annual output of 30 million to 50 million tonnes of ammonia, can capture a double-digit market share even if the Maghreb remains a mosaic of fragmented states.
Morocco’s speed, anchored by the OCP imperative and a relatively open investment regime, positions it as the early mover whose initial projects will lock in offtake agreements with European utilities and chemical majors. On the other hand, Algeria’s legacy pipeline network and gas reserves give it a longer-term play, should it succeed in rebranding natural gas as a necessary companion to the hydrogen transition.
Ultimately, the next few years will separate the engineering realities from the memorandums of understanding that have multiplied across the region. By 2030, North Africa will be on the cusp of a new energy era as the region seeks to convert photons, gas molecules and political ambition into durable wealth without evaporating the natural capital upon which their own populations depend.
BY: Writer Hafed Al-Ghwell is senior fellow and program director at the Stimson Center in Washington and senior fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies.
Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect The Times Union‘ point of view
