Dakhla Atlantic Green Hub

A 47 percent wind capacity factor in the Alizé trade-wind regime, read from the Global Wind Atlas at P50 and carried as a screening figure pending measurement. Seawater cooling at 17 to 22°C, far below the 32 to 35°C of Red Sea alternatives, which is a direct CAPEX advantage on the electrolyser. And the shortest Atlantic sea line to Rotterdam, four days direct with zero chokepoint exposure.

On their own, each is matched somewhere else in the portfolio. Together, only at Dakhla, and only Dakhla adds a local biogenic CO₂ source large enough to carry a methanol slice at the RFNBO certificate premium. That premium is why it leads every financial measure in the set.

The operating problem the project does not have is margin. A 43 percent EBITDA margin is healthy. The binding constraint is capital structure: a $7.57B first-of-kind build cannot be serviced from $304M of EBITDA at ordinary commercial gearing. At 30 percent senior debt the same plant returns 0.97x and does not clear.

A financeable stack exists, solved on the bottom-up model rather than asserted. It runs 20 percent senior debt, 13 percent development-finance debt and a 12 percent construction grant, with the balance equity, and returns 1.35x minimum coverage across every serviced year. That is deliberate under-gearing. A first-of-kind plant in a frontier jurisdiction with no signed offtake does not carry commercial senior leverage, and the stack is built to that reality rather than to an infrastructure template. The structure holds only while the biogenic premium is secured. Strip it and coverage falls to 1.17x, below the lender floor, so the package depends on contracting the premium through an H2Global or EU Hydrogen Bank mechanism rather than assuming the merchant certificate holds. That is the work between screening and FID.

This page describes the Phase 1 build at 500 kT methanol and 150 kT ammonia ($7.57B). The portfolio comparison shows Dakhla on the smaller standardised screening block (420 kT total product, $5.32B) so it sits on one basis with every other site. The two figures are the same 1.03 GW (1,030 MW) electrolyser at two duty levels, not two plants. The screening block is the low-oversizing unit every site is measured on; the build pairs that same electrolyser with 3,090 MW of wind and solar, three times its nameplate, which raises its full-load hours and carries output from 420 kT to 650 kT. Same electrolyser, more load hours, more product. Figures are screening estimates at approximately ±25 percent. Oxygen by-product revenue is treated as upside only; no merchant buyer is contracted at Dakhla.