Britain – Morocco: plans to build a $22 billion subsea project on a distance of 3,800km

A start-up led by former Tesco CEO Sir Dave Lewis plans to build the world’s longest undersea electrical cable, running 3,800 kilometers between North Africa and the United Kingdom.

According to Financial Times, Xlinks plans to complete the £16 billion Morocco-UK link by the end of the decade, supplying enough electricity to power more than 7 million British homes.

Lewis said the project was also raising £800 million to build three manufacturing facilities in the UK in order to meet increased demand for electrical cables used in offshore wind farms and submarine interconnectors.

“With the Moroccan government, we’ve secured an area of around 1,500 square kilometers… On that property, we’ll build a photovoltaic farm, a wind farm, and batteries that, when combined, would generate 10.5 gigawatts of energy,” he told the Financial Times.

The project’s purpose is to offer clean energy throughout Morocco around the clock, using solar during the day and wind at night, with battery energy to fill in the gaps. Lewis explained, “That is renewable vitality that behaves like base load.” “We don’t have any of the inconstancy.”

One of the electrical energies will then be delivered to a facility in Devon via four subsea cables with a combined capacity of 3.66 GW.