Morocco’s energy minister Aziz Rebbah said a project by British start-up Xlinks, which plans to build an underwater electric cable between Morocco and Britain has received his ministry’s preliminary accord, awaiting in-depth studies.
“A number of international companies obtained initial approval to carry out renewable energy and hydrogen projects, especially in the southern regions, aimed for export,” he told Hespress Eng, without giving further details.
Ex-Tesco CEO, and one of the main project’s planners, Sir Dave Lewis said, to Financial Times, “We have acquired an area of about 1,500 square kilometers from the Moroccan government (…) On the ground, we are going to put together a solar farm, a wind farm and batteries that together will produce about 10.5 gigawatts of power.”
The Moroccan minister did not comment on this.
The company proposes to complete the GBP16 billion link between Morocco and the UK by the end of this decade, saying it will provide enough electricity to power more than 7 million UK homes.
A cable as long as the one proposed by Xlinks has never been built, and previous attempts to build extremely long interconnections, such as the IceLink between Iceland and Scotland, have not been successful due to the cost and obstacles.
Tom Edwards, a senior model at energy consultant Cornwall Insight, stated to Financial Times, that importing electricity from Morocco to the UK may not be cost-competitive by the time it starts operating due to the declining cost of wind power.
“An important challenge [for a project like this] is the cost, and the risk that it is not only delays, but also exceeds whether you have to change route at the construction of the submarine cable,”said Edwards.
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