Battery industrialisation and the energy transition: Policy coordination and industrial path in Morocco

The global energy transition is accelerating battery production, creating policy challenges for countries seeking to join low-carbon supply chains. Research on industrial upgrading and global value chains explains integration into production networks. In contrast, research on the development of green industrial paths establishes the importance of regional preconditions, asset modification, and firm- and system-level agency. Less is known, however, about how system-level actors coordinate these elements in structurally constrained and globally interdependent contexts. This paper examines Morocco's EV battery industry and identifies a mechanism and a boundary condition. Drawing on interviews, policy documents, corporate disclosures and secondary data, it identifies policy-mediated cross-path asset alignment: system-level actors translate external regulatory and market pressures into domestic interventions connecting automotive, logistics, mineral-processing and renewable-energy assets with non-local technology and capital. The resulting pathway combines the renewal of phosphate- and cobalt-related activities with diversification into battery-material production and the prospective importation of cell manufacturing. Although this alignment reduces input, logistics, compliance and market-access constraints and may elicit investment commitments, uneven implementation shows that such commitments do not necessarily produce operational capacity, domestic linkages, capability formation, or durable regional value capture. For energy policy, the findings demonstrate both the importance and limits of coordinating industrial, energy and resource policies under external dependence.