£24bn Moroccan solar power project rejected by UK government

The project has been abandoned, partly due to ‘security risks and doubts about its viability’. Not hard to figure that out from the start? In any case it’s a way of not having to say: ‘far too expensive’, a yardstick little used in UK renewables projects.
– – –
A proposed infrastructure link connecting the Moroccan energy grid with the UK has been dropped by the government due to it not being in the “UK national interest at this time”, says E+T magazine.

The UK government’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) has rejected the £24bn power project to bring solar and wind power from the Moroccan desert to the UK via 3,800km-long high-voltage direct current (HVDC) subsea cables.

If built it would be the world’s longest undersea power cable.

Led by developer Xlinks with financial backing from a number of partners including Octopus Energy Group, the project included a proposal to create 10.5GW of renewable generation, 20GWh of battery storage and a 3.6GW HVDC interconnector.

With Morocco’s consistent weather, Xlinks said the solar panels could produce three times more energy than they would in the UK, supplying up to 8% of the UK’s power needs.

In September 2023, the then net zero minister Claire Coutinho confirmed that the proposal had been given the ‘Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project’ status, which means it can bypass normal local planning requirements in a bid to get it built faster.

Since then, Xlinks had approached the government seeking support for the project through the Contracts for Difference scheme, the main mechanism for securing clean energy infrastructure for Britain. This contract would have guaranteed a fixed price per MWh of electricity supplied for the life of the contract.

However, in a blow to the project, DESNZ has released a written statement to parliament confirming that having “evaluated the viability and merits” of the project, it has “after careful consideration” decided not to support it.

The statement outlined that the project is not in the “UK national interest at this time” as it “does not clearly align strategically with the government’s mission to build homegrown power here in the UK”. It believes that domestic projects would bring economic benefits to the UK through jobs and supply chain development.

The department also said the project presented “a high level of inherent risk, related to both delivery and security”.

Ed Miliband, energy secretary, concluded that the project did not “stack up” and that it had too many “holes”, people familiar with the situation told The Financial Times.

Full article here.
– – –
Image: Solar power project in Morocco