Pathways to 100 percent Renewable Energy Supply: Morocco Options until 2030

Transitioning to a sustainable energy supply system is becoming an imperative for many countries around the world. This transition is imposed on many countries for at least three reasons, the first one is environmental, to achieve the COP21 GHG emissions targets; the second one is economic, to reduce the cost of the energy supply and of the budget uncertainties due the fluctuation on the energy prices, and finally the third one is security, to provide more independence in the energy supply chain. In the case of Morocco, these three factors are all important. Indeed Morocco relies heavily on fossil fuels for its energy needs. According to [1] Morocco's energy mix is composed of 90% of fossil fuels for its total primary energy supply, and most of it is imported. In 2009, Morocco adopted a National Energy strategy as a road map for its energy independence. This strategy's main vision is to transition from a fossil fuels based energy system to a more sustainable one where renewable energies will compose 52% of the installed power capacities by 2030. This paper investigates the pathway for the transition to RE with the objectives of achieving the percentage of renewable energies in the energy mix of 42% by 2020, and 52% by 2030. The pathway is determined based on the daily energy demand of the year 2016 as a baseline and assuming an annual growth of 3% of the energy demand until 2030. An optimization program is used the determine the optimum RE source options to implement for achieving the objectives. The results show that wind energy sources could present a strong advantage, given its low cost and its availability in the context of Morocco.