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An £18bn project to link Britain via an undersea cable to a giant wind and solar farm in the Sahara has been delayed by at least a year due to political deadlock in Westminster.
Energy startup Xlinks hopes to supply 8% of Britain’s energy supply by 2030 through a 3,800km (2,360-mile) cable connecting Morocco to the UK, which will power 7m homes by 2030.
The project was expected to start generating power by 2027. However, that target date now seems unlikely.
Xlinks’ executive chair, former Tesco chief executive Sir Dave Lewis, warned that progress had been stalled by recent political upheaval that has ousted three prime ministers in less than six months.
They are trying to secure government “contracts for difference” – a mechanism under which public subsidies are used to offer low-carbon generators, such as windfarms, a fixed price for power. The objective of this arrangement is to encourage investment by making income more predictable.
Lewis told the Guardian: “We spent a long time with the then business secretary [Kwasi Kwarteng] Who said: ‘We like it very much but it needs to go through the Treasury.’ A review was conducted with the Treasury, Cabinet Office and Department for Trade, which was very positive.
“Then we came back to him to start detailing and the political world exploded and as a result, everything stopped. And everyone has changed, so it’s like you’re starting over.
“Time is of the essence for the UK to meet its net zero ambitions, secure energy supplies and reduce bills. We have lost a year.
Xlinks was founded in 2019 by its chief executive Simon Morrish, who has grown the environmental services business ground control across the UK.
When the Morocco-UK link is complete, Xlinks expects to generate 20 hours of reliable renewable energy a day using the Sahara’s sunlight and nighttime wind conditions. About 12 meters of solar panels and 530 wind farms are planned to be built in the 960 square kilometer area of the desert. The site, located in the Guelmim-Oued Noun region, will also have 20 gigawatt hours of battery storage.
The cable transporting power from the site will hug the Moroccan coast, then pass along Portugal, northern Spain and France before circling the Isles of Scilly to terminate at Alverdiscot in north Devon, where Xlinks has already agreed 1.8 gigawatts of connections.
Morocco has an established wind, solar and hydroelectric power industry, and its solar intensity, a measure of generation power, is second only to Egypt and double that of the UK, according to Xlinks data.
Power lines will be laid by the world’s largest cable-laying vessel and buried under the seabed to reduce the risk of damage from fishing boats. The company is in the process of studying the seabed and obtaining an offshore permit.
Xlinks hopes to land a strike price of £48 per megawatt hour, below the £92.50 agreed for the delayed Hinkley Point Sea nuclear power plant in Somerset.
The company argues that despite the project’s scale, it could be more reliable for securing the UK energy supply than local alternatives because UK wind power can be highly variable. Last week National Grid issued, and later canceled, preparations to launch its emergency winter plan after low wind and solar power supplies left tight.
Lewis has personally invested in the Xlinks project along with Octopus Energy and its founder Greg Jackson.
Growing demand for renewable energy has led to increased supply across the industry. In response, its sister company XLCC plans to build two factories to make cables in Hunterston on the west coast of Scotland and another at a yet-to-be-disclosed site in north-east England. Planning permission was first granted in June and is expected to create 900 jobs.
Lewis, who worked for consumer goods company Unilever for 27 years, became chief executive of Tesco in 2014. He quickly faced an accounting black hole and is credited with turning around Britain’s biggest retailer before leaving in 2020. He is now the Chairman of Hellion. , the consumer goods company spun off from GlaxoSmithKline earlier this year.
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