A bold plan is being developed to build the world’s largest undersea energy interconnector

Why is this important: Given the number of proposals to transfer solar and wind power between countries, subsea renewable energy transmission is becoming increasingly common. The latest ambitious idea is a subsea energy interconnector between Europe and North America. Given the number of countries involved, it will require a high degree of technical expertise and geopolitical finesse to pull it off. However, hopes are high that it will work.

A group of entrepreneurs is proposing to build the world’s largest undersea power interconnector, linking Europe and North America with three pairs of high-voltage cables. The link would transport renewable energy back and forth between the continents, taking advantage of the sun’s daily migration across the sky.

“When the sun is at its zenith, we probably have more energy in Europe than we can use,” said Simon Ludlam, founder and CEO of Etchea Energy, one of three Europeans leading the project. “We have wind and we also have too much solar. It’s a good time to send it to a demand center like the U.S. East Coast.”

It is one of a growing number of global ventures seeking to transmit renewable energy via a sea cable. A project called Sun Cable aims to transmit solar power from Australia to Singapore, where there is little space for solar farms. Another example is a joint venture between India and Saudi Arabia that plans to connect their power grids under the Arabian Sea. There are also proposals for a submarine cable system that would deliver 3.6GW of wind and solar power from Morocco to the UK. This project could meet about eight per cent of the UK’s energy needs.

These projects are not far-fetched. The North Sea Link already connects the UK to Norway, enabling the exchange of wind and hydropower between the two countries. Even longer cables are planned between the UK and Iceland, and between solar farms in Azerbaijan and Hungary, where a 1,100-kilometre cable runs along the bottom of the Black Sea.

Undersea power cables are key to these endeavors. They are a key technology for transporting renewable energy over long distances under the oceans. Undersea cables enable power plants to transmit renewable energy over vast distances, often connecting remote offshore wind farms or solar installations to population centers. Demand for the technology is so strong that the market for undersea power cables could exceed $32.86 billion by 2032, at a compound annual growth rate of 8.5 percent. As a point of reference, analysts have estimated the market at $14.6 billion in 2022.

The project Ludlam and his colleagues propose would use cables stretching more than 2,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean floor to connect western Britain to eastern Canada and potentially New York to western France. According to Laurent Segalen, founder of renewable energy company Megawatt-X, the cables could transmit six gigawatts of power in both directions at the speed of light—the equivalent of six large nuclear power plants transmitting power in near real time.

The group knows that the ambitious project will require the support of several countries and a significant sum of money, making the most optimistic construction timeline the mid-2030s. But the coalition is determined to see it through.