Morocco is accelerating investment in data centers and artificial-intelligence infrastructure, but behind the billions of dirhams pledged and the megawatts announced lies a less visible question: where will the electricity come from? The Igoudar Numérique green data center campus in Dakhla is targeting a capacity of 500 megawatts, while an AI-focused facility in Nouaceur aims to reach 36 megawatts by the end of 2027, backed by 12 billion dirhams in investment. Oracle has already opened a cloud region in Casablanca and is preparing a second in Settat.
According to the International Energy Agency, a conventional data center typically requires 10 to 25 megawatts, while large AI-focused centers can exceed 100 megawatts. Run at full capacity around the clock, the roughly 536 megawatts announced for Morocco’s two flagship projects would consume about 4.7 terawatt-hours a year — nearly 10% of the country’s total electricity demand, which stood at approximately 49 terawatt-hours in 2025.
Morocco is preparing a significant expansion of supply. The national electricity utility ONEE has outlined plans for 11.6 gigawatts of new renewable capacity and 2.6 gigawatts of additional storage between 2026 and 2030, part of a broader 177-billion-dirham investment program. Yet these new resources will face competing demand from industry, desalination, electric mobility and green hydrogen projects alongside data centers.
Other countries offer instructive precedents. Spain now requires new data centers above one megawatt to cover at least 80% of their hourly consumption with renewable power generated in that same hour, with each new megawatt of demand matched by new renewable capacity. Ireland, where data centers already account for 22% of national electricity demand, has imposed similar requirements.
Morocco, the analysis argues, has an opportunity to set comparable rules before its own data center sector reaches that scale — anticipating a challenge that Spain and Ireland only began addressing after their grids were already under strain.
