Morocco's Offre Maroc Green Hydrogen Framework: Land, Incentives and Shared Infrastructure for Investors

Correction notice: an earlier version of this page described a “Green Hydrogen Consortium Grant” worth up to 420 million MAD per consortium, with a September 2025 deadline, administered by IRESEN. No such programme exists. Neither Masen nor IRESEN has ever published a call with that amount or that deadline. The page below has been rewritten around the real national vehicle, which is an investment framework rather than a grant.

If you are trying to build a green hydrogen project in Morocco, the door you are looking for is called Offre Maroc, and the organisation holding it open is the Moroccan Agency for Sustainable Energy (Masen). It matters that you understand what is on the other side of that door before you spend six months preparing the wrong document. Offre Maroc does not hand out money. It hands out land, fiscal treatment, infrastructure, and a negotiated contractual pathway. For a serious developer that combination is worth considerably more than a research grant, but it is a completely different proposition, and applications that arrive dressed as R&D proposals do not survive first contact.

Offre Maroc at a Glance

What Offre Maroc Actually Provides

Masen describes the offer as resting on three concrete measures, and it is worth reading them as they are written rather than as you might wish them to be.

Dedicated public land with high potential. The State has identified roughly one million hectares of public land for the sector. The first phase releases approximately 300,000 hectares, parcelled into blocks of 10,000 to 30,000 hectares according to the size of the project proposed. Land is not gifted. It moves through a contractual sequence that begins with a preliminary reservation and only becomes a firm allocation once the project reaches a final investment decision, which is how the State protects public land from speculative warehousing.

Shared structuring infrastructure. This is the part most foreign developers underestimate. Morocco is committing to plan and maintain port facilities capable of handling hydrogen derivatives, national pipeline networks for hydrogen and transformed gas, seawater desalination capacity, salt caverns for storage, a reinforced electricity grid with international interconnections, and industrial zones for local integration. A project that plugs into that shared backbone avoids capital costs that would otherwise sit on its own balance sheet.

Incentives tied to industrial integration. Investment incentives and tax and customs treatment are available, and they are explicitly conditioned on local, horizontal and vertical industrial integration. Masen does not publish a percentage or a ceiling. Terms are settled in negotiation, project by project, which means the depth of your Moroccan industrial commitment is not a soft scoring criterion but a direct input into what you receive.

Alongside these, Masen positions itself as a privileged preliminary contact, supports investors across the implementation of their project, and consolidates investor requirements into government-led study programmes. In practice you are dealing with one counterparty rather than negotiating separately with the land administration, the grid operator, the ports authority and the customs service.

The Five-Stage Process

Masen publishes a five-step sequence, and each step carries a different contractual instrument:

1. Application reception. Your investor offer is submitted and assessed.
2. Initial negotiations. Feasibility studies and pre-FEED work, accompanied by a preliminary land reservation contract.
3. Final negotiations. Front-end engineering design, covered by an advanced study agreement.
4. Accuracy of commitments. The final investment decision, formalised in an investment framework agreement.
5. Follow-up. Ongoing reporting obligations under clauses agreed in the framework agreement.

Two implications follow. First, the studies are financed by the investor, not by the State. If your model assumes someone else pays for pre-FEED, the model is wrong. Second, there is no single submission date that decides everything. Momentum matters more than any calendar entry, because you only reach the next stage once the commitments made in the previous one are genuinely met.

Where the Framework Stands Now

Offre Maroc was formalised by a circular from the Head of Government on 11 March 2024, setting out the operational and incentive terms across the value chain. In March 2025 a steering committee chaired in Rabat selected five national and international operators for six projects in the southern regions, with preliminary agreements allocating up to 30,000 hectares per project. The selected group covers ORNX (Ortus of the United States with Acciona of Spain and Nordex of Germany), a Taqa and Cepsa pairing, Morocco’s Nareva, Saudi Arabia’s ACWA Power, and a UEG and China Three Gorges consortium. Announced output spans green ammonia, industrial fuels and green steel. Reported aggregate investment across the six projects is in the region of 319 billion MAD, though headline dollar equivalents differ across outlets depending on the exchange rate used, so treat any single figure with caution.

In February 2026 the selected investors met the Head of Government, marking formal recognition of the group after preliminary contracts were signed and parcels reserved. Roughly 100 national and international investors have expressed interest in the framework overall, which tells you two things: the pathway is real, and it is contested.

This is the honest context for a newcomer. The first tranche of prime southern acreage has been spoken for. The framework itself remains open and Masen continues to receive applications, but you are now competing against named counterparties who are already inside the process.

Who This Suits

Offre Maroc is designed for investors or consortia proposing integrated projects, from electricity generation upstream to hydrogen transformation downstream, plus the logistics that connect them. It serves the domestic market, export, or both. A realistic applicant profile includes:

• A developer or sponsor able to fund feasibility, pre-FEED and FEED studies before any land is firmly allocated.
• Renewable generation capability at scale, since the hydrogen is only as green as the electricity behind it.
• Identified offtake. Ammonia buyers, steel customers, bunkering demand at a port, or an export contract with a European industrial group.
• A credible plan for Moroccan industrial content that goes beyond hiring local contractors: assembly, manufacturing, services, training, and technology that stays after commissioning.
• Water strategy that survives scrutiny. Morocco is water-stressed, and desalination is part of the shared infrastructure commitment for a reason. Any project assuming access to conventional freshwater will not progress.

This framework is a poor fit for a university group, a technology startup without a sponsor, or anyone whose project exists only as a simulation. That is not a criticism of that work. It is simply the wrong instrument.

The Smaller Research Track: IRESEN

If your work is applied research rather than infrastructure, the relevant body is the Institut de Recherche en Énergie Solaire et Énergies Nouvelles (IRESEN), at https://iresen.org/. IRESEN runs genuine hydrogen calls, but at a scale two orders of magnitude below Offre Maroc.

The clearest recent example is the Franco-Moroccan Inno France Maroc H2 Tech Transfert call, launched in October 2024 with SATT Paris-Saclay. It selects two to three applied R&D projects from Franco-Moroccan consortia, sharing a total envelope of 600,000 euros, under a tripartite arrangement supported by an 800,000 euro contribution from the AFD and the French Treasury. IRESEN handles administrative and technical management and gives selected teams access to shared expertise and infrastructure, including the GREEN H2A platform dedicated to decarbonised hydrogen research.

Note the arithmetic. Two or three projects sharing 600,000 euros is roughly 200,000 to 300,000 euros each. That is a real, useful applied research grant. It is nothing like 420 million MAD, and conflating the two is precisely the error the previous version of this page made. IRESEN also operates Green Energy Park and Green & Smart Building Park, supports a large researcher community, and is a sensible partner for a consortium that needs Moroccan testbed access. Check its calls page directly, since these calls open and close on their own cycles.

How to Approach Offre Maroc

1. Read the official page first. Everything binding starts at https://www.masen.ma/en/green-hydrogen-moroccan-offer. Ignore third-party summaries that quote grant amounts.
2. Write to Masen before you write your offer. [email protected] is the published address, and Masen presents itself as a preliminary contact rather than a gatekeeper. An early conversation about land availability, grid connection and derivative choice will save months.
3. Register on the e-tendering platform. Offers are submitted through https://etendering.masen.ma/. Account creation and document formats are worth handling early rather than during a submission crunch.
4. Build the offtake case before the engineering case. Reviewers will ask who buys the molecule, in what form, at what volume, and under what contract. Size the electrolysers and the storage around that answer.
5. Make the industrial integration specific. Incentives are conditioned on local, horizontal and vertical integration. Name the components assembled in Morocco, the Moroccan firms in your supply chain, the training partnerships, and the jobs, with numbers.
6. Budget for your own studies. Feasibility, pre-FEED and FEED all sit on the investor side of the line. Treat that as project development cost, recoverable only if you reach a final investment decision.
7. Plan for a multi-year clock. Reservation, study agreement, investment framework agreement and reporting obligations are sequential. The 2024 circular to the 2025 selections to the 2026 investor meeting gives you a rough sense of the tempo.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there a grant of 420 million MAD? No. That figure does not appear on any Masen or IRESEN publication and appears to have been fabricated. Offre Maroc offers land, incentives and infrastructure access, not cash.

Is there a deadline? None is published. The process is rolling, structured around negotiation stages rather than a submission date. That does not make it leisurely, since the first phase of land is being allocated to projects already in the pipeline.

Do I need a Moroccan partner? No formal requirement is published, but incentives are tied to local industrial integration and land is public. In practice a substantive Moroccan industrial relationship is close to essential.

Can a research institution apply? Not usefully to Offre Maroc on its own. Research groups should look at IRESEN’s calls, or join a developer-led consortium as a specialist partner.

Is the land free? No. It is allocated through a contractual framework that begins with a preliminary reservation and firms up at the final investment decision, with terms negotiated case by case.

What if my project is storage or transport only? Offre Maroc is framed around integrated projects covering generation through transformation plus associated logistics. A standalone storage or logistics proposal would need to sit inside such an integrated project or connect to one that already exists.

Get Started

Official framework page: https://www.masen.ma/en/green-hydrogen-moroccan-offer

Submission platform: https://etendering.masen.ma/

Investor contact: [email protected]

Applied research calls: https://iresen.org/

Morocco’s hydrogen offer is credible and unusually well organised, with a single agency as the point of contact and a defined contractual path. What it is not is a source of grant funding. Approach it as an investor, with capital for studies and a buyer for the output, and the framework works in your favour. Approach it expecting a cheque and you will waste a year.