The “Global Investment Report 2023”, issued by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) under the title “Investing in Sustainable Energy for All”, ranked Morocco among the top ten developing economies according to the size of their attractiveness to international investment in renewable energies during the period between 2015 and 2022.
The report’s data indicated that Morocco is among the leading countries that have embarked on a promising path in investments related to low-emission energy sources.
The report, which Hespress has a copy of, revealed that Morocco owns a share exceeding one-third (34%) of the total value of renewable energy projects worldwide, especially in the “first ten” developing and emerging countries, which are Brazil, Vietnam, Chile, India, Kazakhstan, Taiwan, Egypt, Mexico, and Indonesia.
In most of the top 10 developing countries with the highest levels of international investment in renewable energy, investment in renewable energy sources represents “between one-tenth and one-third of total foreign direct investment.”
After Taiwan, which topped the list with 63% of attracting renewable energy projects in developing countries, followed by Chile (54%), Morocco came in third place with 34%, according to what Hespress reviewed in the aforementioned report.
The same data highlighted that the national strategy for renewable energies that Morocco has pursued for over a decade has enabled it to have a representative rate of 3% of the total shares owned by the ten developing countries that the United Nations classified in the UN report.
The “Global Investment Report 2023” revealed “the widening gap of the annual investment deficit faced by developing countries while they work on achieving the sustainable development goals by 2030”, warning that it “currently reaches around 4 trillion dollars annually, recording an increase of 2.5 trillion dollars compared to 2015”, (the year in which the sustainable development goals were adopted), which means that “the investment gap in these global goals is widening despite the growth of sustainable financing.”
“Global Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) declined by 12% in 2022,” the UN report says before analyzing how investment policy and financial market trends affect investment in sustainable development goals, especially in clean energies.
One of the main conclusions is that “developing countries need annual investments in renewable energy close to 1.7 trillion dollars”, but last year they only attracted 544 billion dollars of foreign direct investment in clean energy, explaining: “Although investments in renewable energy sources have almost tripled since 2015, most of the money went to advanced countries.”
According to the report, in addition to Morocco, green hydrogen is produced in Niger, Namibia, Egypt, Mauritania, and South Africa. Three-quarters of the projects in these countries produce hydrogen through electrolysis using renewable energy (green hydrogen). Most major investors are divided between American companies and their European counterparts (including Linde (UK), Enel (Italy), and Air Liquide (France)).
