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Join on Telegram Rabat – UK-based clean energy company Xlinks is currently in discussions with the government to employ bankers and secure investors for its UK-Morocco undersea cable project.
The company plans to build a 3 800-kilometer cable connecting Morocco and the United Kingdom. The cable will be able to carry enough electricity to power more than seven million British households.
Xlinks has secured around £40 million (MAD 501 million) in development funding, but it is now looking for investors to secure the budget to build massive wind and solar farms in Morocco, as well as factories in the UK to manufacture the subsea cable.
The project’s total cost is estimated at £17.4 billion (MAD 218 billion). It is expected to create 10,000 employment opportunities in Morocco, with 2,000 of them being permanent.
In an interview with Sky News, Xlinks’s chairman Sir Dave Lewis said that it would take four years to build the cable needed for the UK-Morocco link.
He predicted that the new cable would supply the first electricity by 2027, and that it would be operational at full capacity three years later. The power cable will supply 8% of the UK’s electricity needs.
According to Lewis, the project would “create a completely new, fast growing manufacturing industry for the UK in the renewable energy space”.Xlinks was established with the goal of creating a cheap and reliable new energy source for the United Kingdom.
According to Lewis, Morocco and UK’s long centuries of trading relationships, as well as the North African country’s commitment to growing its energy sector, plays in the favor of this project.
“The Moroccan government has recognised that exporting green (energy) is a very important part of their economic plan going forward, so they have an export strategy,” Lewis told Sky News.
Commenting on the global rise in energy costs amid the Ukraine-Russia war and its effects on the UK, British prime minister Boris Johson said: “we need a power supply that is made in Britain, for Britain.”
The British government has deployed more than £9 billion (MAD 112 billion) to aid families struggling due to the soaring prices.
Morocco’s ambitions towards green energy projects has made it a leader in terms of renewable energy and an attractive partner for many countries.
The North African country has developed one of the world’s largest green energy projects, such as the solar power plant (CSP) at the Noor Complex in Ouarzazate.
Morocco’s “Sahara desert is probably one of the best places in the world to generate renewable energy from .. which makes it a perfect partner for the UK,” said Lewis.
Read also: Morocco Commits to 80% Renewable Energy Use by 2050
