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Telegraph
8 hours ago
- Business
- Telegraph
Miliband rejects plans for £25bn energy cable to Sahara solar farms
Ed Miliband has turned down a scheme to import solar and wind power from Morocco via a 2,500-mile long subsea cables. The Xlinks scheme, overseen by Sir Dave Lewis, the former Tesco chief, would see high-voltage direct current power imported from North Africa through cables running along the coasts of Spain, Portugal and France, and coming ashore in Torridge, Devon. The scheme was 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. However, the Energy Secretary is understood to have refused to back the £25bn project, which was seeking subsidies from the Government. Xlinks had asked for a contract for difference, which would effectively guarantee a minimum price for its power for up to 25 years. Mr Miliband is understood to instead want to focus on 'homegrown' energy projects. The subsea cables were to be made at a factory in Scotland and the power would have exceeded the output of Hinkley C, the £42bn nuclear power station being built by EDF in Somerset. It is understood that Xlinks is also seeking separate finance via power purchase agreements, where companies contract to buy clean power directly from generators. This means it could still go ahead if there is sufficient private sector interest. However, Mr Miliband's decision is still a significant set-back. Sir Dave told The Telegraph in March that Xlinks could take its project elsewhere if ministers did not back it. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has refused to comment on 'speculation' but made clear that a full statement was expected later today. Xlinks was not able to comment pending the Government statement. Xlinks would see seven solar farms and up to 1,000 wind turbines built across an area of Moroccan desert roughly the size of Greater London. Once completed, the scheme is expected to deliver about 3.6 gigawatts of electricity to the UK's national grid – equating to about 8pc of total power demand. Electricity would delivered to the UK via four large subsea cables laid by a ship owned by Xlinks's sister company, XLCC, which is also building a factory at Hunterston in Scotland to manufacture the 10,000 miles of cable. Such cables, known as interconnectors, already link the UK's power grid to France, Belgium, Norway and the Netherlands, with another link to Denmark under construction. The factory, adjacent to the town's closed nuclear power stations, was granted planning permission last year and awarded a £9m Scottish Enterprise grant towards its £1.4bn cost. Its centrepiece will be a massive 600-foot tower in which the cable will be coated in layers of insulation before being coiled onto giant reels for loading into the cable-laying vessel. Xlinks has already raised £100m from financial backers thought to include the Abu Dhabi National Energy Company, along with French giant TotalEnergies and British supplier Octopus Energy. Interconnectors are becoming increasingly important in keeping the nation's lights on as the country shifts towards a reliance on intermitted renewable energy. The UK gets up to 20pc of its electricity from France and other neighbors at some times of the year.
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Miliband shuns £25bn UK-Morocco renewable energy project Xlinks
The government is snubbing a £25bn renewable energy project which promised to import enough solar and wind power from Morocco to meet nearly a tenth of the UK's electricity demand. Sky News has learnt that Ed Miliband, the energy security and net zero secretary, has decided not to proceed to formal negotiations with Xlinks, a privately owned company, about a 25-year price guarantee agreement. A ministerial statement is expected to be made confirming the decision later on Thursday. Money blog: Top chef on overrated trend he doesn't get The government's move to snub Xlinks after protracted talks with the company will come as a surprise to energy industry executives given the company's pledge to deliver large quantities of power at a price roughly half of that to be generated by new nuclear power stations. Xlinks, which is chaired by the former Tesco chief executive Sir Dave Lewis, had been seeking to agree a 25-year contract for difference with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), which would have guaranteed a price for the power generated by the project. One Whitehall insider said its decision was partly motivated by a desire to focus on "homegrown" energy supplies - an assertion queried by industry sources. Sir Dave told The Sunday Telegraph earlier this year that Xlinks would switch its focus to another country if the UK government did not agree to support the project. The company is now expected to explore other commercial opportunities. Xlinks had not been seeking taxpayer funding for it, and claimed it could help solve the "intermittency problem" of variable supply to UK households and businesses. Reducing manufacturers' energy costs was the centrepiece of the government's industrial strategy launched earlier this week. Sources said that market-testing of the financing for Xlinks' construction of a 4,000-kilometre cable between Morocco and the Devon coast had been significantly oversubscribed. Xlinks' investors include Total, the French energy giant, with the company having raised about £100m in development funding so far. The company has said it would be able to deliver energy at £70-£80-per-megawatt hour, significantly lower than that of new nuclear power stations such as the one at Sizewell C in Suffolk to which the government allocated more than £14bn of taxpayers' money earlier this month. It was unclear whether the growing risk of undersea cable sabotage was one of the factors behind the government's decision not to engage further with Xlinks. In an interview with Sky News in 2022, Sir Dave said Xlinks enjoyed low geopolitical risk because of Britain's centuries-old trading relationship with Morocco and the north African country's ambitions of growing the energy sector as a share of its exports. "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," he said at the time. "The Sahara desert is probably one of the best places in the world to generate renewable energy from... so you have a very long period of generation. "And if you're capturing that energy and adding some battery storage, you can generate energy to cover a little bit more than 20 hours a day, which makes it a fantastic partner for the UK." The former Tesco chief added the quality of modern high-voltage cables meant energy could now be transported "over very long distances with very, very few losses". Sir Dave said the technology risks associated with the project were relatively small, citing examples of much longer cable links being planned elsewhere in the world. "The benefit here is that it's proven technology with a very committed reliable partner with a cost profile... that we will never [be able to] match in the UK," he said. A spokesperson for DESNZ said it did not comment on speculation, while Xlinks declined to comment on Thursday.
Sky News
11 hours ago
- Business
- Sky News
Miliband shuns £25bn UK-Morocco renewable energy project Xlinks
The government is snubbing a £25bn renewable energy project which promised to import enough solar and wind power from Morocco to meet nearly a tenth of the UK's electricity demand. Sky News has learnt that Ed Miliband, the energy security and net zero secretary, has decided not to proceed to formal negotiations with Xlinks, a privately owned company, about a 25-year price guarantee agreement. A ministerial statement is expected to be made confirming the decision later on Thursday. The government's move to snub Xlinks after protracted talks with the company will come as a surprise to energy industry executives given the company's pledge to deliver large quantities of power at a price roughly half of that to be generated by new nuclear power stations. Xlinks, which is chaired by the former Tesco chief executive Sir Dave Lewis, had been seeking to agree a 25-year contract for difference with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, which would have guaranteed a price for the power generated by the project. One Whitehall insider said its decision was partly motivated by a desire to focus on "homegrown" energy supplies - an assertion queried by industry sources. Sir Dave told The Sunday Telegraph earlier this year that Xlinks would switch its focus to another country if the UK government did not agree to support the project. The company is now expected to explore other commercial opportunities. Xlinks had not been seeking taxpayer funding for it, and claimed it could help solve the 'intermittency problem' of variable supply to UK households and businesses. Reducing manufacturers' energy costs was the centrepiece of the government's industrial strategy launched earlier this week. Sources said that market-testing of the financing for Xlinks construction of a 4000-kilometre cable between Morocco and the Devon coast had been significantly oversubscribed. Xlinks' investors include Total, the French energy giant, with the company having raised about £100m in development funding so far. The company has said it would be able to deliver energy at £48-per-megawatt hour, significantly lower than that of new nuclear power stations such as the one at Sizewell C in Suffolk to which the government allocated more than £14bn of taxpayers' money earlier this month. It was unclear whether the growing risk of undersea cable sabotage was one of the factors behind the government's decision not to engage further with Xlinks. In an interview with Sky News in 2022, Sir Dave said Xlinks enjoyed low geopolitical risk because of Britain's centuries-old trading relationship with Morocco and the north African country's ambitions of growing the energy sector as a share of its exports. "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," he t said at the time. "The Sahara desert is probably one of the best places in the world to generate renewable energy from... so you have a very long period of generation. "And if you're capturing that energy and adding some battery storage, you can generate energy to cover a little bit more than 20 hours a day, which makes it a fantastic partner for the UK." The former Tesco chief added that the quality of modern high-voltage cables meant that energy could now be transported "over very long distances with very, very few losses". Sir Dave said the technology risks associated with the project were relatively small, citing examples of much longer cable links being planned elsewhere in the world. "The benefit here is that it's proven technology with a very committed reliable partner with a cost we will never [be able to] match in the UK," he said.
