RFNBO pre-certification for Morocco-based renewable ammonia project

Click to learn more. The Tarfaya project in southern Morocco will produce about 1 million tonnes per year of renewable hydrogen, scaling up to 3 million tonnes by 2032. Source: INNOVX.

Part of fertiliser giant OCP Group’s portfolio of renewable ammonia projects, the Tarfaya Green Ammonia facility aims to produce 1 million tons per year of renewable ammonia by 2027, scaling up to about 3 million tons per year by 2032. The project, which was initially announced in 2022, will cost an estimated US$7 billion, and will be powered by a combined total of 3.8 GW of wind and solar energy. This is part of the fertiliser giant’s plans to downscale ammonia imports in its fertiliser manufacturing process.

Thanks to European Union funding through the Mediterranean Green Electrons and Molecules (MED.GEN) Network, Tarfaya has received RFNBIO pre-certification from CertifHy. This implies that current plans for the project meet the stringent standards required to access the European markets.

In the build-up to this commercial scale project, INNOVX, which is linked to the Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P), set up subsidiary HydroJeel to progress renewable ammonia projects for OCP group.

In February this year, HydroJeel received €30 million in funding from the PtX Development Fund, an initiative by the Germany Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), to develop Jorf – a demonstrator project that aims to produce 100,000 tons per year of renewable ammonia by 2026. Jorf will then pave the way for the large-scale build out of the Tarfaya project, acting as a template.