Days after Blockchain company Soluna announced that it is building a 900-megawatt wind farm in Dakhla, Western Sahara Resource Watch (WSRW), a network organization working on the natural resource situation in Western Sahara, denounced the project. On Friday, 10th of August, the NGO slammed Soluna's chief executive John Belizaire who was interviewed on the same by Reuters, stressing that constructing a wind farm in Dakhla «violates the rights of Sahrawi people». Speaking to the Polisario's «news agency», WSRW accused «Morocco of trying to involve foreign companies, to legitimize its occupation of Western Sahara». The project was announced in July by Brookstone Partners, a New York-headquartered firm that backs through its Morocco subsidiary, Platinum Power, Soluna to build a 900-megawatt wind farm coupled with a datacenter for blockchain servers. The company will start the project's off-grid phase in 2019 which will be completed one year later. Soluna will deliver the project in five years at a cost ranging between 1.4 and 2.5 billion dollars, as it promised the Moroccan government. The firm is planning to invest 100 million dollars in the first phase of the project which is expected to generate 36 megawatts, said the same source
