The UK government has shunned a £25bn energy project to bring solar power from Morocco to the UK, via a 3,800km undersea cable.
London-based energy startup Xlinks had been in protracted talks with the government to secure a price for the power generated by the project for 25 years. Xlinks said it could deliver large quantities of power at half the price of new nuclear power stations.
“After careful consideration, we have decided not to support the Xlinks Morocco-UK power project,” a spokesperson for UK’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said.
The government found the project to present a high level of inherent risk and will now focus on domestic alternatives to meet its 2030 clean power mission.
Xlinks chairman Dave Lewis said the company was "hugely surprised and bitterly disappointed" by the decision because the cable would reduce UK electricity prices, and that international investors had confidence in it.
Lewis said the company was now working "to unlock the potential of the project and maximise its value for all parties in a different way,"
Investors in the project, which former CEO Simon Morrish described as “crazy” in terms of its ambition, include UK energy firm Octopus, French energy giant Total and the Abu Dhabi National Energy Company, known as TAQA.
Back in 2023, Xlink’s former CEO Simon Morrish told Sifted the government was “the most important part of the jigsaw” for the company.
At the time, Morrish said the government had set up a dedicated team to consider the proposal, and that they had so far spent 9,500 hours working on it. “This should be a very, very easy decision for them,” he said.
This article was updated on 26th June to add Dave Lewis' statement.
