Morocco has picked the coast, the gigawatt figure and the construction year for its first offshore wind farm, and last week the European Investment Bank appointed the consortium that will work out whether the thing can actually be built.
The EIB picked the consultancy OWC to lead a full feasibility study for the project, which MASEN has endorsed and which targets the Atlantic coast near Essaouira. Joining OWC are PHENIXA and SOFECO, both part of Ginger Group, alongside Gaïa Terre Bleue and NOVEC, with ABL covering marine work, ports and harbours. EIB is funding the two-year study through the Facility for Euro-Mediterranean Investment and Partnership Trust Fund. The scope covers site selection, a meteorological measurement campaign, concept design, ports and logistics, the regulatory framework, grid impact and integration alongside Moroccan grid specialists, and the environmental and social impact assessment. EIB and MASEN signed a cooperation agreement on offshore wind in September 2022 with a EUR 2 million grant, and the technical-assistance tender that followed was cancelled in July 2024 before being relaunched.
Why it matters
Read that scope list again. Site data, port capacity, grid rules, permitting law. We would argue every offshore market needs those four before its first auction can clear, and they take years to produce because they cannot be imported from someone else’s coastline. World Bank Group estimates put Morocco’s technical offshore potential at roughly 200 GW, about 22 GW of it suitable for fixed-bottom and 178 GW for floating. Potential is the cheap part.
What it means for MENA
The regional offshore conversation trades in gigawatt figures and end-of-decade dates, and this award is a reminder that four years separated the 2022 EIB-MASEN agreement from the study that starts the real clock. Morocco is buying the unglamorous layer first. A met campaign, a grid study, a legal framework. Plans had advanced to a proposed 1 GW project near Essaouira with construction targeted to start by 2029, per the Union for the Mediterranean as of June 2025. My read: whoever eventually bids that gigawatt will price it off data this consortium is now being paid to collect, which makes the met campaign more worth watching than the tariff talk.
