A New Era of Clean Energy: Transcontinental Power Lines

An ambitious project to build an almost 2,500-mile undersea power line would connect huge wind and solar farms in Morocco with the UK, providing a reliable electricity supply to meet forecast growth in demand.

The plan’s architect, Simon Morrish, said it was the UK’s best option for clean electricity.

“It was a question of, ‘Why isn’t anyone doing this?'” said Morrish, a former management consultant who also runs a landscaping services company.

Morrish has secured early-stage investment and hired an experienced team, but his vision faces slim odds. It must obtain grants from the UK government, raise tens of billions of dollars and secure key permits from countries that control the seabed. The plan calls for the construction of the tallest building in Scotland – a giant cable factory – and a special ship for laying the lines.

However, the project shows how the energy map is changing.

Because coal- and gas-fired power plants can be located near the areas they serve, their transmission lines typically don’t have to travel long distances. However, large, empty sites with plenty of wind and sun tend to be far from the cities that need the power.

Already, networks in Northern Europe are connected by undersea cables to share the growing supply of wind energy. In December, a 770km power line between the UK and Denmark was launched, the world’s longest onshore and offshore grid connection.

Singapore, which lacks space for wind and solar farms, wants to import 30% of its electricity by 2035. Last year it gave conditional approvals to plans to import much of that electricity via undersea cables — some more than 600 miles long — from renewable energy projects in Indonesia, Cambodia and Vietnam.

Connecting Morocco with the UK takes this idea to a new level.

The tallest building in Scotland

Few places have more green energy potential than western Morocco. The shortest day has 10 hours of sunshine, and strong winds occur towards the end of the day. Morrish’s venture, Xlinks, wants to build enough solar farms, wind turbines and batteries in the area to meet 8% of the UK’s electricity needs or power around seven million homes.

The four offshore transmission lines will require nearly 10,000 miles of cable — much more than current suppliers can handle. So Morrish started a cable supply company to build a factory with a tower taller than the Washington Monument, where the colossal insulated cables would be lowered.

Construction of the factory near the Scottish village of Fairlie has been delayed several times. Residents doubt it will happen.

“It’s a nice area, picturesque, and you’re going to build a huge factory that runs 24/7?” said Rita Holmes, a longtime Fairlie resident.

Transmission projects could take well over a decade to complete. In the U.S., the Biden administration is pushing to ease permitting for lines to strengthen the national grid, raising hopes for more projects.

The 339-mile high-voltage transmission line under construction will deliver hydropower from Quebec to New York. The 550-mile line will deliver wind energy from New Mexico to California and Arizona.

“We need a bit of a catalyst,” said Matthieu Muzumdar, partner and deputy CEO of infrastructure investor Meridiam. “Some of the federal and state programs we’re looking at could be part of that.”

Overseas, Meridiam is a major investor in the first link between the UK and Germany and intends to invest in a planned 750-mile power line linking Greece to Israel via Cyprus. The project will lower sections of cables with a mass equal to the Eiffel Tower to a depth of approximately 3 km in the Mediterranean Sea.

“What we’re trying is bigger than what’s been done before, both in terms of the size of the project and the amount of electricity we’re trying to transmit,” said Pascal Radue, who heads the generation and transmission unit at Nexans, a cable supplier working on the first stage of this project from Greece to Cyprus.

Nexans is one of a small group of companies that provide high-voltage DC cables that can transmit electricity for hundreds of kilometers with minimal losses.

The company has been selling off cables for nearly five years. Rivals have similar backlogs.

A dream of African wind and sun

Demand for cable TV could decline if the development of renewable energy sources fails to meet expectations or if major projects fail.

The Swedish government recently rejected a Baltic Sea connection with Germany, citing concerns that it would increase prices at home.

Projects can be derailed for many reasons. An Xlinks-like plan to send Australian solar power to Singapore collapsed last year when the two billionaires running it fell out. The project was resurrected by one of them, Mike Cannon-Brookes, co-founder of the software company Atlassian.

Uncertainty limits cable suppliers’ willingness to expand. Therefore, Xlinks needs its own power supply.

Morrish convinced investors including TotalEnergys, Abu Dhabi’s state-owned utility, and General Electric’s wind-power spin-off, to buy into his plan. Xlinks closed a funding round of £100 million, or $126 million, in April.

However, construction costs alone are expected to be between £22 billion and £24 billion, Xlinks says. The company is in talks with the UK government about a grant that Morrish says will spur investment, but those discussions have dragged on.

Morocco must also believe in this idea. Xlinks claims the country will gain jobs, investment and tax revenues.

The dream of sending North African wind and sun to Europe is not new. An earlier venture that would have transferred power over the land collapsed more than a decade ago amid infighting among its supporters and political turmoil in the region.

Morrish said the outlook is brighter now: renewable energy costs have fallen and undersea cables can run through fewer jurisdictions, making permitting easier.

“I have every confidence that it will work,” Morrish said. “It’s just taking a little longer than I expected.”

Write to Ed Ballard at [email protected] and Emma Brown at [email protected]