Danish clean energy developer GreenGo Energy has lodged an application with Mauritania’s Ministry of Petroleum, Energy and Mines to develop Megaton Moon, a 60GW/190 terawatt-hour (TWh) hybrid solar and wind project.
The project will also have 35GW of electrolysis capacity, which can produce four million tonnes of green hydrogen or 18 million tonnes of green ammonia annually.
Megaton Moon will be implemented in stages, with commercial operation targeted by 2028 for the pilot stage and between 2033 and 2035 for the final stage.
The project will use more than 10TWh of surplus power to build a large-scale desert farming industry.
It will generate 70 million tonnes of desalinated water each year to support farming – three times what is used by the project to produce green fuel.
GreenGo submitted the application in late November 2023. The ministry has expressed an interest and the company expects approval in the first quarter of 2024.
The project seeks to transform Mauritania and its capital, Nouakchott, through socioeconomic, green industrial and urban growth, bringing permanent and sustainable solutions to the water and energy scarcity issues of the region.
It is progressing with the support of GreenGo’s development platform in Denmark, drawing on experience at Megaton's Danish sister project.
The company has selected Danish consulting company COWI for power-to-X and infrastructure design and New Power Partners for renewable energy engineering design.
GreenGo Energy CEO Karsten Nielsen stated: “The climate crisis is real. We need action immediately to reach Paris commitments and net zero – but we also need action at scale and with impact.
“Megaton Moon embodies climate action with an ambition to deliver 1% of the total global green hydrogen demand by 2050 to reach net zero. So we only need 100 projects at this scale completed and distributing green fuels globally by 2050. This is doable.”
The company collaborated with the Ringkøbing-Skjern Municipality in Denmark to deliver the 4GW Megaton green energy park in 2023.
To be built on 4,000 hectares of land, and will include onshore solar and wind farms and a 2GW offshore wind farm.
