World-Leading Solar Energy Nation

Morocco has made itself one of the two biggest users of solar-generated electricity in the world. Not because it's the most environmentally-friendly solution but because it's the cheapest. John Laurenson reports

In the Khemisset region, two hours south of the Moroccan capital Rabat, Benadjma Bougismir picks up one of this spring's new additions to his herd of goats. He earns a little money selling his animals at the 'souk', the weekly farmer's market. But the olives from the trees and his bright green field of wheat go to make the oil and bread his family eats.

By any standards, his is a pretty simple existence but up on his roof, Bougismir has something to make many in the ecologically-conscious, Western middle-classes green with envy.

Up on this very solid mud and straw roof is a piece of state-of-the-art hi-tech... a blue photovoltaic panel tilted up to the sun. Look around and all you see is range upon range of arid hills. It would cost a fortune to hook up this area's sparse population to the grid.

Electricity brings light and Latin American soap opera

Which is why, until January this year, Bougismir's house was one of the 50 percent or so of Moroccan homes with no electricity. Now, this panel is charging up the battery which puts light in the Bougismir bulbs and juice in the socket. Which means the whole family can follow the best soap operas Latin America has to offer.

Benadjma and his wife Ito are well pleased with their new service.

"It was wonderful the day we got electricity here", says Benadjma Bougismir. "It was an amazing thing seeing lights in every room! Now we can watch television, we can listen to the cassette player... the children can do their homework after dark."

"Before I had to cook before it got dark", explains Bougismir's wife Ita. "Now I can cook when I like and if I want to weave in the evening I can."

Every month, Benadjma takes his horse and cart to the 'souk'. It's here he sells his goats and where he pays his seven dollar electricity bill. It's also here that new converts are made to solar energy.

Subsidy money from German investment fund

At a stand, a man is selling solar power. Three kits are on offer, the most basic, the one Benadjma went for, is made up of a panel, a battery, four lamps and a socket.

The price, 40% of which is covered by government subsidy which, in turn, is subsidised by a German investment fund, is close to what city dwellers pay for the electricity they get from the grid. It's through this mixture of the free market and government and foreign intervention that Morocco is hoping to bridge the energy gap with the rich countries of the North.

"We've got the sun... we should use it!"

Ahmed Acharaani is regional technical director at the Moroccan electricity utility.

"Our objective is to bring electricity to all the people of Morocco by 2007", states Ahmed Acharaani. "That means getting electricity to ten million people that don't have it today. Most of those will be hooked up to the grid but at least a million live in remote, rural areas where it's cheaper to use solar power. We've got the sun... we should use it!"

The company that has so far won the lion's share of the booming Moroccan solar power business is Temasol, a joint-venture by the French oil and electricity companies Total and EDF.

The company won the first tender to supply sixteen thousand solar power kits and reckons it's well placed to win the next contract for another 150,000 this spring.

40,000 Moroccans are already getting their electricity from solar power. By 2007, the government says there'll be a million of them.

Temasol's executive director Stephane Maureau says they're doing more than selling a product: they're drawing the whole country into the service economy...

The environment is but an afterthought

"The idea is we do not sell equipments, we sell a public service", says Stephane Maureau. "And we notice that in the place where we install the systems, people feel they are allowed to demand public service. And very often, after having the solar energy at home, people ask 'do you think we could have water at home?'"

In trying to reach that large part the target market for solar energy that can't read, the French company produced a promotional cassette.

The publicity material between the songs doesn't make a big deal out of the ecological benefits of going solar. In fact, that goes for just about everyone involved in Moroccan solar power: from the government to the hill farmers who now have light in their homes. In the country that's become a beacon of hope for alternative energy, the environment is an afterthought.

John Laurenson