Morocco plans to cover 60% of its drinking water needs through desalination, announced Nizar Baraka, Minister of Equipment and Water, during the World Water Congress in Marrakech in early December 2025. By 2030, the kingdom thus plans to produce 1.7 billion cubic meters (m³) of desalinated water per year. Today, 17 desalination plants already generate 345 million m³ per year (see map). Faced with water stress, aggravated by six years of drought, desalination is one of the pillars of the National Program for the Supply of Drinking Water and Irrigation (PNAEPI). This technology is intended to meet Morocco’s domestic and industrial needs. Some even believe that it may help preserve the kingdom’s agricultural potential.

The salty bill of desalination

But desalination comes at a cost, often too high for irrigation. For now, desalination plants supply only drinking water for households, thanks to the reverse osmosis process. All of them, except the Chtouka-Aït Baha plant near Agadir. Likewise, the future plants in Dakhla and Casablanca will have to irrigate agricultural land in addition to supplying drinking water. In Casablanca, the future plant will supply water at 4.5 DH per m3 (DH/m3), a globally competitive cost. “4.5 DH per m3 assumes that the plant will use renewable energy to the maximum. Because energy costs represent more than 45% of the operating cost of desalination plants,” explains Ehssan El Meknassi, a consultant specializing in water-resource and irrigation management.

When plants are powered by fossil energy, the price per m3 instead ranges between 8 and 11 dirhams, she emphasizes: “That is the price of desalinated water in Agadir.” Yet all currently operating plants are powered by fossil energy. Beyond the high cost of water, scientific studies have for several years criticized a “poor adaptation” of desalination plants relying on fossil fuels: they are supposed to address the effects of climate change… created by those same fossil energies.

Aware of this issue, Nizar Baraka has repeatedly emphasized that new desalination plants would operate using renewable energy. Even so, Mohamed Taher Sraïri, a researcher at the Hassan II Institute of Agronomy and Veterinary Medicine (IAV), notes that a plant powered exclusively by solar energy remains an illusion, and that we should instead speak of an “energy mix.” “There will indeed be solar, but also fossil energies that will make the cost of water higher,” he explains. He then mentions equipment costs, such as pumps, which are part of the expenses to be amortized. “No one today can give you a definitive figure on the exact production cost of desalinated water,” the researcher affirms.

Water too expensive for traditional agriculture

Above all, insists Mohamed Taher Sraïri, even with an attractive price of 4.5 DH/m3 for desalinated water, “it can be used profitably only by a very limited group” of farmers. “Which sectors can make use of water at this price?” asks the researcher, who emphasizes: “All traditional agriculture, including livestock, fodder crops, and cereal crops — which remain the foundation of national agriculture — cannot make profitable use of water at 4.5 DH/m3.”

He then recalls that, historically, farmers worked with free water from rainfall, before working with “state water,” stored in dams. This latter source is offered at around 0.5 DH/m3, a very low cost compared to the price mentioned for desalinated water. Yet after nearly seven years of drought, state water benefits far fewer crops. Today, “there are entire perimeters where water service has been stopped because the dams are empty, or because the water is reserved for other uses,” the academic notes. The researcher continues by noting that some farmers dig wells to irrigate their fields. On average, the cost of this water ranges between 1.5 and 2 DH/m3. “At that price, we already start to question the profitability of this groundwater,” he points out. The expert thus shows that water from desalination, also known as “non-conventional” water, is excessively expensive.

Not to mention that farmers must add nutrients so that its quality is suitable for crops. “This cost falls on the farmers themselves, who must treat the water, particularly to adjust the presence of certain heavy metals depending on crop sensitivity,” explains Ehssan El Meknassi. She cites the Chtouka-Aït Baha plant in Agadir as an example: part of the water it produces is enriched with nutrients by the farmers who use it.

Mohamed Taher Sraïri finally raises the issue of territorial disparities. Coastal areas — and therefore close to the plants — will benefit from this resource more than inland regions. He recalls that this question has already arisen in the Souss-Massa region. “Farmers near the Chtouka-Aït Baha plant had access to this water to produce tomatoes for export. It is one of the crops that can make profitable use of water at such a price. Whereas 60 kilometers away, in Taroudant, farmers are also demanding their share of this water from the public authorities.”

Adding value to brine to reduce costs?

The recovery of brine could help reduce the cost of desalinated water. The topic was also discussed during the World Water Congress. Brine is very salty water and is among the waste products generated by desalination plants. Yet some experts believe that recovering brine by extracting salts or minerals of very high economic value, such as magnesium, could make desalinated water a co-product of the plants’ activity. Theoretically, the researcher explains, if the minerals were the sought-after product during desalination, the desalinated water could become almost free. But he warns that this process requires very expensive technologies and is complicated to implement.