Africa-focused developer Chariot has entered into a partnership with Paris-headquartered renewables firm Total Eren to develop its previously announced 10GW Nour project in Mauritania. The partners aim to progress feasibility studies and offtake agreements for green hydrogen from the project.

“We believe that green hydrogen is going to be an essential part of the energy mix in the future, and we are delighted to enter into this new partnership on a continent where our strategic shareholder, TotalEnergies, holds a strong footprint,” says Total Eren’s global head of business development, Fabienne Demol. TotalEnergies owns a 30pc stake in Total Eren.

Chariot and Total Eren suggest the Nour project could produce “among the most competitive green hydrogen in the world”, due to Mauritania’s ample wind and solar resources.

“We are delighted to enter into this new partnership on a continent where our strategic shareholder, TotalEnergies, holds a strong footprint” Demol, Total Eren

“We look forward to working together on this highly important green hydrogen development in Mauritania. Having a partner of such calibre, who shares our vision and focus for the future, is a key part of developing this valuable asset and marks an important step forward in Project Nour’s evolution,” says Adonis Pouroulis, Chariot’s CEO.

While this new partnership represents progress made since Chariot secured a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Mauritanian government in December 2021, there remains some uncertainty as to whether the project will be completed.

Mauritania has taken the lead on private investment commitments in North Africa but this is almost exclusively in the form of non-legally binding MoUs, according to analysis by risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft on green hydrogen in the region published in December 2021.

“These projects therefore remain hard to visualise given the authorities’ historical difficulties in attracting and securing investment at this scale across a wide range of sectors,” Verisk continues.

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Author: Polly Martin