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The company Chariot, which has several energy development projects in Africa, has given some new details about its plan to install a clean energy plant in Nouadhibou, the economic capital of Mauritania.
According to information provided by Chariot, it is a project to produce green hydrogen through the process of electrolysis. The plan, called Project Nour, envisages setting up 10 gigawatts of infrastructure. Project Nour would take advantage of wind and solar resources in the northern region of Nouadhibou, which have a comparative advantage compared to the northern hemisphere. Nouadhibou is located on the edge of Mauritania's Atlantic coast and has around 14 hours of sunshine per day in the summer months, with an intensity that easily reaches 8,000 watts per square metre.
Project Nour is, according to some specialised media, the latest great achievement of the Mauritanian Ministry of Energy led by Abdessalam Ould Mohamed Saleh, who has been pleased to close the deal with the British company. The parties have now signed a study and feasibility contract for the project, which will take shape over the next two years.
According to energy news portal UpStream, Project Nour could become one of the world's largest green hydrogen production plants by 2030. The initiative takes shape at a time when many eyes are turning to Africa for answers to energy supply. As experts such as Nemesio Sánchez-Cuesta, former president of Repsol, have made clear, green hydrogen has a key role to play in the energy reconversion and diversification of European energy. Chariot CEO Adonis Pouroulis agreed with this idea at the Frontier's Africa Energies Summit in London. According to statements reported by UpStream, Pouroulis said: "The holy grail for success in green hydrogen is that you have to bring the cost of green hydrogen down to $2 per kilogramme. No one has achieved that yet, but to get to that magic figure you need sun, land and access to water.
The Mauritanian authorities hope the project will bring diversification to the Mauritanian economy, jobs and development to the region. For its part, Chariot already has two more advanced projects on the African continent. One is a gas project off the coast of Morocco, and the other is a renewable energy project in Burkina Faso. For this second project, Chariot has a partnership with Total's subsidiary, Eren, which has also shown interest in the Mauritanian project and, according to information from Africa Intelligence, intends to join Project Nour.
Mauritania has always behaved as a cooperative and stable partner for the European Union in these tables, although in the eyes of the gallery it shows an equidistant position in the conflicts that will redraw the geopolitical landscape in 2022, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Many European countries, led by Spain, maintain considerable trade cooperation with the country. China also has an ambitious investment plan, but Russia has not yet reached out to the country in the same way as in other countries on the continent.
