‘Back our £25bn green energy project or we'll take it overseas'

Telegraph

30-03-2025

Britain risks missing out on a pioneering £25bn green energy project because of ministerial dithering, one of the country's most prominent business figures has warned.
Sir Dave Lewis, the former Tesco boss spearheading an audacious plan to power millions of UK homes with cheap solar and wind power from Morocco, has warned that prolonged bureaucracy could derail a scheme that promises to lower household bills, slash emissions and create thousands of jobs.
As chairman of X-Links, the company behind the project, he warned that 'international investors won't wait forever'.
Sir Dave said 'there are people lining up and down the street' to provide the £8bn of funding needed, and when the company recently tested the debt markets for the remaining £17bn of financing, it was 'significantly oversubscribed', he added.
However, X-Links could decide to take the project to another country amid growing frustration over the time it is taking to get the green light from the Government, he claimed.
Under the company's plans, solar and wind power generated in Morocco's Saharan Tan-Tan region will be transported at hyper speed through 4,000km of hi-tech underwater cables to the Devon coast in less than a second.
'This is sub-second power. Literally, you switch a light on and it's there,' Sir Dave said.
The scheme is expected to provide electricity for 9m homes and cut carbon emissions from the UK power sector by around 10pc, while also bringing down energy bills through a reduction in wholesale costs.
A new factory employing over 1,200 people has been commissioned in Scotland to provide the thousands of miles of cable needed to connect Morocco with the UK, with the plant eventually expected to supply other clean energy initiatives like it.
However, X-Links is working on parallel plans to reproduce the exact same set-up in Germany and another unnamed country, which will be fast-tracked if the UK version cannot overcome political red tape in the coming months.
Instead of exporting power to Britain, X-Links could choose to partner with another state, which would likely then be where the giant cable factory would be built instead of Scotland.
'The people who have invested in this project want it to go ahead in the UK,' he said. 'We think that's by far and away the best use of this energy, but there comes a point where you go, 'OK, we're four years in. We've done everything that you asked us to do, but this process is taking an enormous amount of time.''
Despite being designated a project of national significance nearly 18 months ago, X-Links is now waiting for Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, to give it his blessing in the form of a long-term inflation-linked contract that will guarantee the company can sell its electricity at a fixed price.
The so-called strike price X-Links is seeking is somewhere in the region of £70 megawatt hours (MWh), making it cheaper than nuclear, biomass, and tidal power, according to Sir Dave.
The cost of offshore wind farms is similar but 'not directly comparable', because the weather means they are not always reliable. That is unlike weather patterns in Morocco, which he claims can enable electricity generation for 19 hours a day.
Sir Dave said X-Links chose Morocco because 'the sun shines every day and the wind blows every evening ... It's geographically perfect'.
Meanwhile, the decision to build a completely new factory in south-west Scotland was prompted by a global supply squeeze that is causing a long wait for the copper and aluminium cables, which are roughly the diameter of a saucer.
The current wait is around eight years, and the delays are 'getting worse' because demand is rising and there are only three suppliers across Europe. By building its own factory, X-Links will be able to bypass such obstacles.
The site in Hunterson on the Ayrshire coast was chosen because it is located next to water deep enough to receive ships that lay the cable.
It also comes with enough land to accommodate thousands of kilometres of power lines, as well as a 180-metre tower that will be the tallest man-made structure north of the Scottish border.
This will be used to stretch out the cables vertically, which will ensure they remain 'perfectly cylindrical', Sir Dave said.
What X-Links needed was essentially 'planning permission for a very large town', he said.
Sir Dave, who dragged Tesco back from the brink of financial disaster, said Whitehall inertia can be traced back to the chaotic final throes of Tory rule.
'The issue with the Conservative government was we had five energy ministers in less than three years ... Given the numerous stops and starts, and then a general election ... I think they [X-Links investors] are genuinely getting a little bit frustrated,' he said.
Perceptions of administrative apathy risk inflicting further damage on Britain's waning image abroad, Sir Dave warned.
'I think they [investors] genuinely say: 'Of all the places you can invest, we like the UK, the rule of law, the quality of people – all of those things,'' he said. 'But they're frustrated with our lack of policy, lack of engagement, lack of real partnerships.'
Sir Dave questioned whether the UK's standing would be boosted by the Chancellor's backing for several large infrastructure projects, such as the Lower Thames crossing between Kent and Essex – 16 years after work on the road tunnel began.
'I think they'd look at the crossing and say: 'That was 16 years ago. Are you telling me that X-Links is a 16-year wait before they decide?''
As for Morocco, he said it is fast becoming a renewable energy superpower.
The country's abundant sunshine and vast desert make it a prime location for solar power, and its long Atlantic coastline means it gets strong trade winds at night, making it ideal for wind power generation too.
X-Links believes this combination will increase the reliability of Britain's energy at the same time as improving the diversity of supply.
'It's counter-cyclical to anything that happens in the North Sea. The problem for us as a country is, when the wind doesn't blow, because we're so small, it basically takes out all of the generating assets,' he added.
X-Links was one of the first big renewable energy projects to envisage using high-voltage direct current (HVDC) underwater cables, but the plans have spawned a series of copycat proposals.
With nearly 30 other clean energy projects around the world looking to use the same technology, Sir Dave fears that these too could lure X-Links investors away if government approval remains elusive.
'The worry is that some of your investors and sources of financing have their heads turned and go off and do other stuff, and at some point you're struggling to sort of keep them on board,' he said.
He is concerned that Labour's race to hit net zero by the end of the decade will result in a raft of perfectly viable green projects, including the X-Links scheme, being overlooked because they won't be ready until after the deadline.
Yet Sir Dave points out that energy demand is expected to accelerate after 2030 because of electrification: 'You need to be building against that demand – now. You don't want to be waiting.'
He also fears that X-Links' chances of getting government sign-off could suffer because of Westminster's focus on improving Britain's home-grown energy sources.
'It's a reaction to what's happened with Russia and Ukraine,' he said. 'It plays on this fear that we are dependent on somebody else [but] all the material required for a nuclear power plant comes from abroad.'
The potential for damage to the cables from ship anchors and the risk of sabotage is also minimal, he said. Firstly, they will be laid too deep to come into contact with most ships, while the cables will be in territorial waters.
'If somebody were to come after these cables, it would effectively be an act of war,' he said.
Sir Dave also rejects the suggestion that there is something morally questionable about exploiting the natural resources of a developing country to decarbonise Western industrialised nations.
'This is Morocco driving this,' he said, highlighting how X-Links will create 10,000 jobs in the country.
'The Moroccan king and the Moroccan parliament are saying, 'for the good of Morocco'. It's strategic for them and the amount of investment that comes to Morocco as a result of this is enormous.'