Ambitious UK-Morocco Power Cable Gets UAE and Octopus Backing

An ambitious project to send green power from Morocco to the UK through a subsea link has secured £30 million ($37 million) of funding from two major investors.

(Bloomberg) — An ambitious project to send green power from Morocco to the UK through a subsea link has secured £30 million ($37 million) of funding from two major investors.

Xlinks First Ltd., which plans to supply almost 8% of Britain’s current power demand from new solar and wind projects in Morocco, has secured £25 million from Abu Dhabi National Energy Co., known as Taqa, and £5 million from Octopus Energy Group.

It’s a significant investment for the power project which represents a largely unprecedented task of fueling one country from another with four 3,800-kilometer (2,361-mile) cables below the sea. Xlinks says they will be the world’s longest high-voltage direct current subsea lines, and aims for completion by 2030.

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The power will come from a 10.5 gigawatt facility of solar and wind farms that’s aided by 5 gigawatts of battery storage, it said in a statement on Wednesday. The company says that can deliver power at a much cheaper cost to consumers than current wholesale prices.

The UK’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has established a team to work with Xlinks on the project, which could create 10,000 jobs in Morocco, the company said.

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