Solar extraversion is the use of renewable energy megaprojects to mobilize foreign resources in support of domestic political objectives, applying Jean-François Bayart's concept of extraversion to solar (Bayart 1989). Morocco's Noor Ouarzazate complex was backed by $2.5 billion in funding from international lenders and gave the country standing it deployed for its own objectives, among them energy security, a domestic solar sector, and support for its position on the Western Sahara. Morocco capitalized on donor preferences that already suited its plans, and the rents of that extraversion proved fragile (Schmoll, Miklian & Hoelscher 2026).
Strategic extraversion means mobilizing foreign resources in support of domestic political objectives (Bayart 1989). Morocco's renewable megaprojects did this with solar. They mobilized concessional finance from multilateral and bilateral donors eager to fund projects that fought climate change and supported economic development in the post-Arab Spring Middle East and North Africa. Money that would otherwise have been raised through higher-interest public debt went into projects serving the interests of the Moroccan state and regime (Schmoll, Miklian & Hoelscher 2026).
The Noor Ouarzazate complex is 582 MW across three concentrated solar power plants and one photovoltaic plant, built between 2013 and 2018, commissioned and 25 percent owned by the state-owned Moroccan Agency for Sustainable Energy; the remaining 75 percent is owned by the Saudi developer and operator Acwa Power. The largest CSP installation in the world received billions of dollars of concessional finance from an array of multilateral and bilateral donors, and $2.5 billion in funding from international lenders sits behind it.
The standing followed. Morocco hosted COP22 in Marrakesh in 2016, a few months after Noor Ouarzazate was inaugurated, and took delegates on a tour of the new complex. Its main geopolitical objective is recognition of its sovereignty over the Western Sahara, and support for the 2007 autonomy plan grew until the UN Security Council endorsed it on 31 October 2025 as the basis for negotiations over a final settlement.
Morocco has never had an official position against decentralized solar. The parliament passed laws 13-09, 38-16, 48-15, 82-21 and 40-19 between 2010 and 2023 to enable it, and successive governments delayed the implementation decrees and enabling measures until June 2026. The blockage sat in the power market. ONEE, the national grid operator, sole legal buyer and at the time sole legal producer, worried about the instability that large numbers of small injections could cause and about the revenue that self-production would take away. Opening the grid to high voltage renewable production from private actors is said to have caused a drop of 30 to 40 percent of ONEE's sales.
The Ministry of Interior, a more powerful ministry than the Ministry of Energy and officially responsible for the network of power distributors, is said to be a key source of the longstanding blockages on self-production. The ministry is said to envision a cross-subsidized business model for the new Sociétés Régionales Multiservices, and it fears these will not be viable without control of the more profitable sale of electricity. In everyday governance no institutional pilot adjudicates between MASEN, ONEE and the ministries of Finance, Energy and Interior (Schmoll, Miklian & Hoelscher 2026).
The deficit was written into the original business plan, which assumed MASEN would buy at roughly 1.62 MAD/kWh and sell to ONEE at 0.8 MAD/kWh, with the Ministry of Finance covering the gap and the World Bank offering a credit facility. Noor is said to never have reached even the World Bank's conservative output projections, production at Noor Ouarzazate had to be halted for costly repairs, and MASEN's operational deficits and debt levels mean it now struggles much more to raise finance. MASEN head Mustapha Bakkoury was relieved of his duty in March 2021 and replaced three years later by Tarik Moufaddal.
The geopolitical payoff came late. Interviewees did not confirm geopolitical calculation as a major consideration at the planning stage, emphasizing instead the immediate goals of building a functioning power plant and kickstarting a domestic solar sector. Recognizing Morocco's agency in pursuing extraversion does not make the strategy a successful one, only a rational one at the outset (Schmoll, Miklian & Hoelscher 2026).
Evaluated locally, Noor can look extractive. Evaluated nationally, it delivered real but fragile and uneven returns. It grew the supply of electricity, reduced reliance on fossil fuel imports that drain foreign currency reserves, and ended up generating significant geopolitical benefits. A megaproject can underperform financially and still deliver on energy security, industrial signalling and diplomatic capital, benefits that accrue at the national scale and rarely matter for project-level evaluation. Much of the literature assumes the right level at which to adjudicate trade-offs for renewable energy projects is the immediate vicinity of the project, and the Moroccan case shows the level of evaluation changes the verdict (Schmoll, Miklian & Hoelscher 2026).
Schmoll, Moritz, Jason Miklian and Kristian Hoelscher. "Solar extraversion: incumbent interests, foreign capital and the making of Morocco's megaproject strategy." Globalizations, 2026, pp. 1-21. DOI: 10.1080/14747731.2026.2726683.
Schmoll, Moritz, Jason Miklian and Kristian Hoelscher. "Solar extraversion: incumbent interests, foreign capital and the making of Morocco's megaproject strategy." Globalizations, 2026, pp. 1-21. DOI: 10.1080/14747731.2026.2726683.
Solar extraversion is the use of solar megaprojects to mobilize foreign resources in support of domestic political objectives, applying Bayart's concept of extraversion to solar. Morocco drew $2.5 billion in funding from international lenders for the Noor Ouarzazate complex and gained diplomatic standing it used for its own objectives, including energy security and its position on the Western Sahara (Schmoll, Miklian & Hoelscher 2026).
Because incumbents in the power market stood to lose from decentralization and no one adjudicated between them. ONEE feared grid instability and the sales it would forgo, the Ministry of Interior is said to be a key source of the blockage on self-production, and the implementation decrees for five enabling laws passed between 2010 and 2023 went unpublished until June 2026. Given ONEE's requirement that Noor keep producing in the peak hours after sunset, concentrated solar power was also the cheaper and administratively simpler option at the time of decision-making, before China's production expansion made photovoltaics and batteries more affordable.
Weakly at best, if resource curse means natural resources creating negative economic and political impacts for the country as a whole. Noor produced negative and positive effects locally, and its national returns have been real but uneven: more electricity supply, less reliance on fossil fuel imports, and significant geopolitical benefits. The project underperformed in terms of its productivity and in doing so contributed to leaving MASEN, the state agency that owns 25 percent of Noor, weakened financially.
No. Morocco sought concessional finance for objectives of its own and found donors eager to provide it. Megaprojects and donor preferences suited one another, and the alignment is better read as capitalized on by Morocco than imposed upon it, even though the rents of that extraversion proved fragile.
Three findings travel. Aversion to decentralization is best explained by the desire to retain political control over the production and sale of electricity and by the clashing financial interests of incumbents and reformers, each with institutional relays, in the absence of a politically powerful day-to-day coordinator. Foreign capital did not dictate the path. Third, the level at which megaprojects are evaluated matters: evaluated locally Noor can look extractive, and evaluated nationally it delivered real but fragile returns for Morocco.