Swiss Firm Plans $1 Billion Solar Fuel Project in Morocco

Solar fuel in Morocco. Gianluca Ambrosetti, CEO and co-founder of Synhelion, in an exclusive interview with Asharq Business, said his company plans to invest $1 billion (10 billion dirhams) in Morocco to develop a sustainable synthetic fuel production project, relying mainly on solar energy.

Synhelion will deploy its innovative Sun-to-Liquid technology: concentrate the sun to make fuel. Developed by researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, this technology consists of concentrating solar rays using mobile mirror fields aimed at a receiver installed at the top of a tower. The intensity of the radiation thus captured makes it possible to reach temperatures above 1,000 degrees Celsius, the temperature necessary to trigger the fuel synthesis process, according to Barlamane. About 100,000 tons of solar fuel should be produced per year in Morocco.

Why choose to set up in Morocco? "We chose Morocco for three major reasons: the abundance of its sunshine, the availability of the raw materials essential to our process, and the existence of a robust industrial fabric, favorable to the development of new technologies," explained Gianluca Ambrosetti, co-founder of the company, following a meeting with the Moroccan Minister of Investment, Karim Zidane, on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Created in 2016, Synhelion is a start-up from the EPFL laboratories, based in Zurich, Sweden. The company develops solar power plants using mirrors that reflect the sun’s heat into a concentrator. Since 2023, it has been a member of the WEF’s global innovator community.