my innovation journey starts inland, south of morocco s major cities and mighty atlas mountains, just north of the sahara desert, near the quiet outpost of ouarzazate. this part of saharan morocco is known as the door of the desert. the landscape out here, it s almost like it s from another world. feels like we could be on mars. these plains receive three times the sun as parts of northern europe. ..and are home to a world leading project of staggering scale. this is noor, a solar power station, putting morocco at the forefront of pioneering renewable technology. i m used to feeling small, but this makes me feel even smaller. hello, abed, salam. hello, my friend, salam. nice to meet you. nice to meet you, too. this is incredible! and lots of sun. lots of sun, yeah. which is what we want for something like this. yeah. this is not an ordinary solarfield. panels with over 7,000 mirrors follow the sun. and i can hear lots of sounds at the moment. it s quite eerie. is that the pan
So it s nice and light. add boiling hot water there that s our cooker. dare i ask you, emma, what about showers? what about toilets? the shower is a wet wipe and the toilet is a bucket. that s the loo?! there is also a scientific component to the trip. as they row, the boat will be sampling the sea water, recording aquatic sounds and looking for the presence of tiny plastic particles called microplastics. when they leave the thames, the crew will head west along the south coast, before starting the long and potentially treacherous row north towards scotland. jonah fisher, bbc news. now on bbc news tecthlore: morocco. in tecthlore, i go in search of the most exciting innovations the world has to offer. and i get to combine my two
Passions tech and travel. this time, i m in morocco, visiting often unseen parts of the country and world leading projects, tackling global problems. a lot of small boxes! it can move freely, up and down. 0oh! i ll be visiting the largest concentrated solar power plant on earth. i ve never seen anything quite like it. samir, hello. salem alaykum. ..discovering how morocco s world famous cuisine is being grown against the odds. that was not a bit of dust, that was a lot of dust! ..and meeting the start ups building the worlds of tomorrow. can you actually make me look better than i do there? yeah, promise. this is tecthlore morocco.
And it also helps preventing up to i million of greenhouse gas emission each year, so it s quite an achievement for morocco. electricity generated here goes to morocco s national grid. from there, some is already cabled to spain. it can be a big and reliable partner for either europe or other countries, however it has to maintain this trade off between meeting or answering the domestic demand and international level, so there is this fine lines that morocco needs to assess. and, as the sun moves west, these panels have already completely changed direction. you can really see the evidence of them following the sun. if these seem rather sandy, dusk brings one last surprise. ..as ijoin the night team for operation mirror clean.
An online marketing startup. it s her second stint here, though she s also worked from the ivory coast, france, panama, mexico and more. so i guess my first question to you is what brings you to morocco? the kindness of people is the most memorable thing. i ve been invited to eat couscous and tagine at, like, a taxi man s house. sounds good. it was so nice, yeah. it doesn t happen in my country. i don t know if it does in yours, but. not very often. facebook groups meetup and instagram help digital nomads connect. and there s a growing sense of community here, too. the tech sector has been booming in morocco. there s actually co working, just of startups. you can even feel that they re proud of it. just around the corner, julie s favourite co working space caters to digital nomads from many countries.