Britain Shuns $34 Billion Morocco-UK Subsea Power Project (reuters.com) 27
The UK government has rejected the 25 billion ($34.39 billion) pound Morocco-UK Power Project, citing a preference for domestic renewable initiatives that offer greater economic and strategic benefits. The project aimed to supply solar and wind energy from the Sahara to power up to seven million UK homes. Reuters reports: "The government has concluded that it is not in the UK national interest at this time to continue further consideration of support for the Morocco-UK Power Project," energy department minister Michael Shanks said in a written statement to parliament. He also said the project did not clearly align strategically with the government's mission to build homegrown power in the UK.
Xlinks' Morocco-UK power project would have tapped Moroccan renewable energy via what would have been the world's longest subsea power cable. The plan involved building 3,800 kilometers (2,361 miles) of high-voltage direct current subsea cables from Morocco to southwest England. The company had been seeking a guaranteed minimum price for the electricity supplied, known as contract for difference, from Britain's government.
Xlinks' Morocco-UK power project would have tapped Moroccan renewable energy via what would have been the world's longest subsea power cable. The plan involved building 3,800 kilometers (2,361 miles) of high-voltage direct current subsea cables from Morocco to southwest England. The company had been seeking a guaranteed minimum price for the electricity supplied, known as contract for difference, from Britain's government.
Re:I am surprised... (Score:4, Interesting)
Usually the UK likes having its balls rudely and roughly handled by people from foreign lands.
Of which this is a perfect example. Renewable energy is 100% strategic for the UK and is something which the UK needs to build up in order to have the cheap energy which will give us the chance of keeping more manufacturing. Ordinarily I'd disagree with this decision big time, however adding 3,800 KM to the undersea cables that have to be guarded against Russian interference sounds unwise at this particular time. This decision is clearly being driven both by Russian threats to underseas infrastructure and by overseas trolling campaigns which make government more reluctant to invest riskily in renewables.
In the meantime, China is able to keep investing vastly in renewable energy and soon will have an almost unassailable lead in cheaper energy from it. That's despite their geography being much worse than the UK for doing it in.
Re: (Score:3)
The UK is wasting huge amounts of money on a couple of nuclear reactors that aren't needed and which only supply extremely expensive electricity. If the investment was going into renewables at the rate it should be going in I'd be okay with this decision, but it seems more likely that it wan cancelled to divert funds to these nuclear projects.
We could have been world leaders in renewables, particularly offshore wind. I think we have already missed that boat though, with other European countries, and of cour
Yep (Score:3)
As a Brit, pro-Europe and anti-Brexit, who is quite into my solar...
I think this is a good idea. The money is better spent elsewhere and it's increasingly proven risky to rely on things running across ocean floors. To our nearest neighbours across the channel, we're probably okay, we can monitor that stretch easily enough and none of it is international waters.
But round to Morocco? That's just a nightmare of a project to even start and keeping that cable safe for decades to come? Seems unlikely.
For that price we can build nuclear sites, or HUGE solar or wind farms and just solve the problem ourselves, or more interconnects to closer countries (but I don't think we're at capacity in that regard anyway).
Re: (Score:2)
The funny thing is for a moment my brain switched France and Morocco (or Britain and Spain) because in my mind, only with that kind of proximity would such a project ever have made sense.
When I read your post, I had a short reboot and my mind went "How crazy do you have to be to even consider this?"
Frankly, I think the most important thing we all want first and foremost is a grid that does not suck. And since that is a much tougher proposition than the question of where we get our power from to begin with..
Re:Yep (Score:5, Interesting)
The funny thing is for a moment my brain switched France and Morocco (or Britain and Spain) because in my mind, only with that kind of proximity would such a project ever have made sense.
When I read your post, I had a short reboot and my mind went "How crazy do you have to be to even consider this?"
This actually does make sense to a large degree, with some Brexit stupidity included. The thing is that, almost any time that the North of Scotland is experiencing reduced wind generation, Morocco will be having the prevailing winds and will be generating a surplus, so getting Electricity from Morocco to the UK fixes huge amounts of energy imbalance and reduces your very expensive storage or thermal power needs vastly.
North-South electricity transmission in Europe overall is seriously lacking. That's a problem that extends all the way to Germany from Morocco. Brexit put the UK outside the European single market for electricity and so less of a priority for French and Spanish interconnect building. Having this direct connection would have bypassed that problem and helped balancing things lots.
Frankly, I think the most important thing we all want first and foremost is a grid that does not suck. And since that is a much tougher proposition than the question of where we get our power from to begin with... I think everyone and their donkey having solar with battery buffer is the way to go.
Rooftop solar is quite expensive, at least as a home add on, but recently some progress with the idea that newbuilds should come automatically with solar might help.
Even if we plop down ten nukes tomorrow and generate ten times the solar too, the lines are still crap and the renewables will still have the potential to bugger the grid.
Wind power is very much what stabilizes the grid from the problems of power systems like nuclear which aren't able to adjust quickly enough as demand changes throughout the day. Wind power is very much able to stop and start in seconds (in fact milliseconds, due to the inverters they use) That's why you often see wind turbines in the UK not running, despite the fact that the electricity they generate is already paid for. It's cheaper to pay them to stop generating than it would be to either turn down a nuclear plant or to pay for the extra storage needed so that nuclear could be used effectively.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed, on top of that, you do not want to be dependent on another country for a substantial part of your electricity. The way politics are going, it is getting sexy to coerce and force things to get what you want. It would give a foreign country a bit of leverage. "UK, drive on the right side of the road or we revoke the environmental permit of your little solar array".
The UK is a major exporter of renewable energy and has lots of potential to be much more important for this. It's something where the UK really should be the one driving interconnection rather than the other way. Fortunately there already is huge inter-connectivity which mostly goes over the shortest possible link, directly to France through the channel.
Re: (Score:2)
They'd be better off connecting a power line from morocco to gibraltar and spain.
Re: (Score:2)
That already exists and more are being built but it doesn't solve the problem that the capacity from Spain to the UK is limited and hard to build. This would have bypassed that.
Re: (Score:1)
But round to Morocco? That's just a nightmare of a project to even start and keeping that cable safe for decades to come? Seems unlikely.
I expect recent events like a Chinese cargo ship "mysteriously" losing an anchor at sea about the time some undersea cables were damaged likely made UK rethink this cable to Morocco.
Another issue I heard against this project were accusations of "colonizing" Morocco. The claim was this would be a repeat of past sins of Britons going to places in Africa to exploit natural resources without proper compensation, that by buying electrical power from Morocco that leaves natives there somehow lacking in electrica
Re: (Score:3)
Windmills at sea would be at as much risk to attack as any undersea cable, in part because there would be undersea cables to bring the wind power to shore where it can be used.
Please stop making up misinformation just because you think it might be useful for the nuclear industry. Windmills at sea have multiple, much shorter cable connections directly to the UK through UK territorial waters which means that a) attacking a cable causes less damage b) any submarine doing it are much more vulnerable to discovery and attack c) a submarine doing this can legitimately be interdicted without needing proof they are carrying out an attack.
Let's hope that such attacks are attempted because
Re: (Score:2)
Plus, the more the cables UK has towards offshore wind (and other countries), the more resilient UK becomes to potential cable dragging attacks. Total war is a different story and we're far from there. Assuming we have witnessed covert attacks in the Baltic to create a costly annoyance... An adversary cannot attack 20 undersea cables and keep the headlines "mysterious attacks". Maybe three can be damaged until surveillance is upgraded, like we have seen in the Baltic. The more UK has, the less it feels the
Re: (Score:2)
It wouldn't be something that we rely on, just a way to reduce our energy costs. We have some of the more expensive energy in the world because prices are basically set by gas generators, so the less gas we use the cheaper it will get. If Putin does damage the cable, we will have to fall back to fossil fuels or import more from elsewhere, until it is fixed.
There are a few projects like this around the world. There is some risk, nobody knows for sure if they can be protected well enough to be viable, but if
Re: (Score:2)
Seems the BREXIT makes them so scared about the EU, that they do not like to take the short route, and connect it to Gibraltar and the European grid.
Don't discard foreign partners (Score:5, Interesting)
While I understand the objective of "homegrown power", connection to foreign suppliers is useful. When Spain went lights out, Morocco swapped from importing from Spain, to exporting 500 MW and seeded the restart and stabilised the network (in Spanish) https://www.mundiario.com/arti... [mundiario.com] . Great Britain as an Island has limited connectivity to its neighbours and needs to develop them to provide resilience https://eandt.theiet.org/2025/... [theiet.org] It currently operates a number of links to France, Belgium, Denmark, Norway for a total 10 GW https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The cable to Morocco would have been a very expensive project and UK can develop connection to say, Spain, which it does not connect yet and has solar. Using partners in a different area is important as a storm could pull down connections simultaneously in UK, northern France and Belgium (something like Cyclone Lothar in 1999 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] )
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe Morocco should look at what the UK might do with all that power (besides powering homes) and use their power domestically.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not like Moroccan babies die when Morocco trades electricity with Spain or UK. Morocco already considers their needs before selling and they even have become an importer from Spain (they are phasing out fossil fuels) https://en.7news.ma/growth-at-... [7news.ma] While electricity will be useful to their bright future, Morocco is sitting on a gold mine and what they need right now is money to build the things that will consume their electricity. That money can come from exports from all the excess Saharan sun expos
Re: (Score:3)
Maybe Morocco should look at what the UK might do with all that power (besides powering homes) and use their power domestically.
The thing is that, for the cheapest energy, wind and solar, Morocco and the UK have different timing and cycles. Morocco could have made money selling electricity to the UK when the UK needs it most and could also potentially have benefited from getting electricity from the UK in times when Morocco has less wind.
Increasing power transmission is a benefit for all, not just one end of the connection.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes but this isn't that. It makes little sense to interconnect to a grid that is effectively 3 countries away instead of strengthening existing grid ties. A grid is only a grid when it's not a stupidly long single run of cable. Spain doesn't make much sense either, because again that's a long cable. Better option is to increase supply to existing connections to France, Belgium, and Germany tying into the CESA grid, and let the CESA carry power from Spain upwards.
Better with Iceland? (Score:2)
Other European countries should pick it up. (Score:2)
If we have a look at solar influx maps, or just have general geography knowledge, it's pretty obvious that Northern Africa has enormous available areas that can be used for large scale solar plants. And lots of them at that. They can use solar towers for nighttime generation, and large areas filled with solar panels for daytime peak generation.
North Africa can, by investing on their own, become entirely energy independent. If they buy up some of the Chinese panel overproduction, and then generate their o
Retrofuturism worth reading (Score:3)
In it, David McKay makes comments about future energy mix. If you look at the full PDF [inference.org.uk], the idea of a cable from northern Africa to elsewhere is explored starting page 178. Bear in mind this book was written late 90s/early 2000s with the last revision being 2008 (the author has sadly passed). Generating from Morocco appears on page 181.
Thoroughly good read and I recommend it to anyone interested in the mechanics and figures behind energy transitions. Clearly some will now be outdated...but it's surprising how little. A lot of what he suggested is now unfolding.
Re: (Score:2)
That aspects are outdated 17 years after its last update does not surprise me. That it is fundamentally incorrect however...given the sources and calculations, I think you'll need a to provide a little more reasoning than "you should
Progress is being made (Score:2)
If domestic renewables in the UK can beat Morocco and HVDC, then we really are talking.