The AMAN Project: Accelerating the green energy transition in Mauritania

In November 2021 at COP 26 in Glasgow, CWP Global and the Mauritanian government signed a Memorandum of Understanding for the development of a 30-gigawatt (GW) green hydrogen project in a coastal region of Mauritania. Now known as the AMAN project, it represents one of the largest of its kind in Africa and is expected to transform the regional energy mix while generating critical revenue for the Mauritanian government.

The central premise of this globally significant development is to generate renewable energy from arrays of wind turbines and solar panels. The generated energy will then be transmitted to a downstream site and used to power various facilities to produce green hydrogen (hydrogen created by the electrolysis of water), green ammonia (ammonia made from green hydrogen) and fresh water. A marine export facility will export the green ammonia to the global market. The project will broadly consist of the following elements: up to 975,490 ha of onshore wind and solar energy generation, including all associated infrastructure (upstream site); a desalination, electrolysis and green ammonia generation facility (downstream site); and a marine export facility.

The proposed annual generation capacity of the development is approximately 110 TWh of electricity, which will be used to produce 1.7 million tonnes of hydrogen or 10 million tonnes of ammonia. It will also produce 50 million cubic metres of fresh water each year for public use.

In order to proceed with the project, the environmental and social risks, challenges and opportunities within the areas being considered for development needed to be identified. RSK was asked to prepare a screening report to identify these risks.

Using dynamic data collation systems and geographic information system (GIS) software, the RSK team combined the relevant data and information in the public domain with that obtained from consultations with local stakeholders, relevant authorities and site visits. The report clearly identified the risks and opportunities for the project, mapped the constraints identified, provided an initial significance assessment for each constraint, defined data gaps and identified ‘no-go’ and ‘developable’ areas.

In addition to the screening exercise, a review was undertaken to establish the legislative framework within which the development will be consented and will operate.

RSK’s work provided a sound basis for scoping the future environmental and social data collection and impact assessments that will be required to support subsequent stages of the development cycle.

AMAN is expected to increase Mauritania’s gross domestic product by 40–50% by 2030 and by as much as 50–60% by 2035. It will also create significant employment opportunities: the number of jobs in the industry is expected to rise by 23% and national unemployment is expected to fall by almost a third by 2035.

It is envisioned that the project will also have local impacts deriving from the large-scale generation of renewable energy. It will help improve access to clean energy and clean water and will drive the development of new green industries in the area.

In 2022, AMAN entered its next phase of development when CWP and the Mauritanian government announced the signing of a Framework Agreement for the project.