Wind business across the Middle East and North Africa, charted every week.

Four years. That is how long it took to turn an EIB offshore wind grant for Morocco into a consultant contract.

In September 2022 the EIB and Masen, Morocco’s sustainable energy agency, signed a cooperation agreement with a EUR 2 million grant for an offshore wind feasibility study off Essaouira. MEED reported on 3 September that the EIB has now awarded a EUR 1.99 million contract for the feasibility and environmental studies on a planned 1 GW project. Eleven firms bid. Ten were registered in the European Economic Area and one outside it.

Now read the contract terms. It runs for a maximum of 43 months including possible extensions, and construction is targeted to start in 2029. Count 43 months from an award reported in early September 2026 and the window closes in spring 2030. The source does not state the contract start date, so I read this as an open question.

My prediction: the 2029 date moves. The studies can finish early, but I would not plan a supply chain around that. My view is that a 1 GW offshore project that rushes its environmental assessment pays for it later.

It took four years to buy the question.

Which comes first off Essaouira: the study results or the construction date?

ACWA Power said construction has started on three wind plants totalling 1.5 GW in Kungrad district, Karakalpakstan, a USD 3.06 billion programme. The package includes a 300 MW battery system, about 1,500 km of high-voltage transmission line, three new 500 kV switching substations and two upgraded ones.

ACWA guides commissioning in Q1 2027. UzDaily reports that ACWA’s Karakalpakstan projects as a whole are expected to generate about 8.77 billion kWh a year. President Mirziyoyev launched construction on 18 September, according to UzDaily. Together with the 300 MW Nukus 1 and 2 plants, ACWA’s Karakalpakstan wind fleet would reach about 2.3 GW.

Why it matters

Wind at this scale now arrives as a bundle of turbines, batteries and transmission. We read the grid scope as the part that sets the schedule.

What it means for MENA

We read this as Saudi capital exporting a full delivery model. In our view it becomes a yardstick for wind-plus-grid packages across MENA.

Six hundred and fifty six square kilometres of state wind concession on the Gulf of Suez. A government-backed study in 2007 marked 60 percent of it as red zone, closed to turbines because of migrating birds.

That map still sorts the new plots. Suez Wind Energy’s southern 550 megawatt plot landed in the orange zone, where further study is required, beside three plants already in the green, inside an Important Bird Area 100 kilometres long. The EBRD rated the project Category A and is financing the 1.06 billion dollar build with up to 200 million dollars. ACWA Power and HAU Energy are among the sponsors.

Then read the biodiversity action plan. Its estimate for that plot, after mitigation, is 34 soaring birds a year, mostly from collisions with the 47 kilometre overhead line rather than the blades. The EBRD page says line routes are determined by the Egyptian authorities and generally follow existing lines.

Our reading

The developer inherits the wire it will be judged on. We think the market prices this backwards. Wind speed and turbine cost get the models, while the deadliest piece of the project may be the one the developer does not route.

The plan has observers on watch twelve hours a day through 28 October. When the next Gulf of Suez round opens, who prices the wire?

Saudi Arabia awarded USD 54.2 billion of power contracts in 2024. By early September 2026, the year’s total stood at USD 3.38 billion.

MEED’s Mark Dowdall puts 2023 at USD 26.1 billion and 2025 at USD 27.5 billion. Wind took USD 4.4 billion of the 2025 awards, and USD 2.2 billion of wind work is still at bid evaluation or main-contract tender.

Round 7 wind bids were due in September: 1,300 MW at Bilgah and 900 MW at Shagra, 2,200 MW together. MEED says contracts from Round 7 may now fall into 2027 rather than materially lifting this year’s total.

Two cautions. These are all-power figures, with wind one slice of them. And MEED links the slowdown partly to a shift toward battery storage and transmission, alongside Round 7 procurement delays.

Our reading

The wind money is at bid stage, with no awards yet. A bid is a promise. An award is a purchase order, and the supply chain only hears the second one.

Algeria generates more than 99 percent of its electricity from natural gas, and its entire wind fleet, on IRENA statistics cited by Ecofin Agency, is one 10 MW farm near Adrar. On 30 September Sonelgaz asked the world to build two more, 100 MW each, in Laghouat and Djelfa.

The reported terms say more than the megawatts do. Bids close on 25 November, eight weeks after launch. Foreign firms can bid alone or in consortium. Algerian firms must partner with a foreign one. The scope runs from study and engineering through civil works, supply, assembly and commissioning, with grid connection included.

Two things stand out. First, 200 MW is a third of the 601 MW of renewables Algeria had installed at the end of 2025, per IRENA figures cited by Ecofin Agency. One tender moves the national total. Second, the coverage I found mentions no power purchase agreement, which suggests a build contract rather than a developer-financed IPP. That is my reading, not a confirmed structure.

My prediction: the partnership rule will decide this field before the turbine price does. With eight weeks on the clock, bidders who already have an Algerian partner start ahead, and everyone else negotiates while they price.

In Algeria, the hardest page of the bid may be the partnership agreement.

Will 25 November draw a real field, or only the consortia that formed before the notice landed?