Africa CCUS Forum in Morocco

This first CCUS event in Morocco was hosted by the University of Mohammed VI Polytechnic (UM6P) on their Ben Guerir campus, on the 4^th and 5^th February. It was co-organised by UM6P – University Mohammed VI Polytechnic, the Global CCS Institute, IEAGHG, the Gulf Coast Carbon Center, and UM6P’s Applied Chemistry and Engineering Research Centre of Excellence (ACER).

The Africa CCUS Forum aimed to highlight CCUS as a business opportunity in the growing carbon management market for hard-to-abate industries and existing fossil fuel power plants. The Forum brought together researchers and industry from Morocco and other African countries. It was interesting to hear climate strategies that include CCUS from Morocco, Mauritania, Nigeria, Egypt and Kenya, and more climate strategy considerations from Ghana and Tunisia. Relevant lessons and experiences were shared from the US and Norway, CCS in the global climate scene and regulations were shared by us, and a great global projects update provided by GCCSI. There were interesting discussion sessions on finance, carbon markets, and the implications of EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) which is a topic of much attention to countries exporting to the EU such as Morocco and Tunisia.

OCP Group is one of the world’s largest phosphate-based fertilizer suppliers and is based in Morocco, with a large facility at Ben Guerir. They shared their strategies for decarbonisation of their phosphate mining and processing activities and where CCUS could play a role, recognising that it is very important to decarbonise their contribution to the international agriculture sector. Sessions also considered transport experiences from other countries in the MENA region, summaries of technologies for capture and pipeline transport, and also research into CO₂ utilisation for microalgae propagation. A discussion was held about remote CO₂ sources without access to transport and whether developing storage, mineralisation or utilisation were better options for captured CO₂.

A session was held on CCS workforce resource and capacity building, where the IEAGHG’s International Summer School got a lot of interest, as well as promotion of online courses such as the University of Edinburgh’s famous CCS MOOC course, formal educational courses such as at Khalifa University in UAE, and professional re-training course such as provided by the Gulf Coast Carbon Centre. UM6P also shared examples of some of their own research projects.

The Forum concluded with a ‘What Next’ session where, with the Gulf Coast Carbon Center, we described the benefits of creating centres of excellence in CCS (and our new Global Network of Centres of Excellence in the Global South), and funding opportunities in the region were presented by GCCSI. I helped to conclude the event with encouragement of the PhD students at UM6P to take an international perspective in tackling the global problem of climate change and the international collaborative nature of CCS.

It was especially rewarding for me to see this event become reality because the inspiration arose from our GHGT16 conference in Lyon in 2022 from the Developing Countries session organised by the World Bank. UM6P’s Professor Abdel Zaabout attended this and had a vision for Morocco, and so followed up with us and the World Bank immediately with discussions on assisting CCUS in Morocco including about a centre of excellence. We then invited Professor Zaabout to present his ideas a month later at COP27 in Egypt in our UNFCCC Side-event on CCUS in Africa (along with South Africa and Nigeria), and the discussions have continued since, leading to this event.

Many thanks to Professor Abdel Zaabout, Professor Youssef Belmabkhout and colleagues at UM6P for hosting, and for the co-hosting by OCP Group, ACER and Innov’X. We hope that this knowledge-sharing event and the 100+ attendees will help Morocco to progress further in developing CCUS for its applications.

A report of the event will be produced in due course and the presentations made available. For more information see ACER | Applied Chemistry and Engineering Research center of Excellence (ACER CoE).