It comes as little surprise that yet another grandiose techno-utopian vision has ended not with a triumphant march toward Net Zero, but with a flick of the off-switch. Last week, Britain’s energy secretary quietly announced that the government “has pulled the plug on a £24 billion plan to bring Moroccan wind and solar power to Britain via the world’s longest subsea electricity cable, citing concerns over security and costs” . In other words, after years of hype, headline-grabbing simulations and talk of “reliable clean power for 19 hours a day,” the reality of risk and expense finally intruded—and the dream of Sahara sun for all has been consigned to the scrapheap.
The scheme, championed by Xlinks and backed by big-name investors from Abu Dhabi’s Taqa to TotalEnergies, was unveiled in 2022 with a headline price tag of £16 billion. By the time official talks fizzled, project costs had ballooned to between £22 billion and £24 billion—and the fixed, subsidised price for UK consumers had climbed from a promising £48/MWh in 2012 terms to a sobering £70-80/MWh, on par with Hinkley Point C’s notorious £92.50/MWh deal from a decade ago . It was a textbook illustration of how techno-optimism meets political reality: grand ambitions crashing headlong into the twin walls of finance and geopolitics.
Perhaps the most telling line came when officials admitted this “first-of-a-kind mega project” carried “a high level of inherent, cumulative risk, delivery, operational, and security.” In plainer terms, nobody quite trusted a 3,800-mile subsea cable stretching from the Sahara to Devon to keep the lights on—or to fend off hostile actors, accidental damage or simple technical failure . For all the talk of homegrown power, the reality was a foreign-built supergrid running through disputed waters, vulnerable to every storm, saboteur or bureaucratic blunder.
And yet just a few years ago, this venture was presented as the ultimate win-win: millions of desert acres covered in solar panels and wind turbines, exporting 3.6 GW of “reliable” energy to 7 million homes and displacing imported gas.
The initial delivery method proposed in this projects for energy collected in Morocco to be delivered to homes and businesses in UK was by undersea cable but this was found to be unfeasible in avery imaginable way, cost, technical difficuty, security, politics etc. and an alteenative proposal to transport the cuurent via the national grids of France and Spain put forward.
How many of you spotted that yes, this is the same Spain where only a few weeks ago the entire 70% solar/wind supplied grid shut down due to power overload which because a surge of current flowing into the grid as both wind and solar generators experiences perfect conditions simultaneously while insufficient grid inertia destsbilised frequency? Spain's high capacity undersea Moroccan Inreconnector could do nothing to save the situation.
(Note: the problem isn’t lack of supply, it’s lack of inertia only available from spinning generation. Since this means the majority of supply must be spinning generation, the alleged aim of wind/solar – battling the evil devil Siotu – cannot be achieved and its expense not warranted.)
And spread that frequency failure to part of southern France via an interconnector causing power cuts there, to the evident delight of the French. Are interconnectors une bonne idée? L’ on y pense.
Long distance interconnectors are usually DC and can provide no inertia. The French/Spain one is short distance AC which is why Spain was able to export its frequency chaos.
Without mostly spinning generation, grids are inherently unstable and at constant risk of failure from frequency instability which can be caused by a variety of factors.This is why for all the hysterical claims of the UK's green lobby that on a breezy, sunny day, renewables are generating up to 70% of our electricity is such a joke. In order to provide the necessary inertia to smooth out sudded fluctuations in current that are a feature of ;gren' technologies, we have to keep gas power stations running twenty four hours a day and pay the operators to let the otput go down to earth.
Spain exports to France and France exports to England – but this is not dispatchsble. It is heavily dependent on whether Spain and France have spare capacity available on demand. It overlooks the other energy self-harming Country Germany which relies heavily on France and Norway when dunkelflautes are about… often in Winter. Norway is threatening to restrict supplies via interconnector as extra-territorial demand is forcing prices up to – unhappy – Norwegian consumers. France meanwhile is faced with replacing its fleet of aged 59 nuclear reactors, of which recently 26 were out if action for repair/maintenance a few months ago and France had no spare juice, struggling to,meet its own requirements.
Oh – and then there’s energy loss. The further electricity travels the less comes out the other end. So by the time it arrives in England, consumersd might get might get enoough juice on \ winter's morning to boil a small kettle for a cup of tea. So long was they don't switch on the low wattage light at the same time.
But back to the sheer wrong - headedness of the Sahara project.
Consider that you can’t build stable turbines or panels on shifting sands and that the sands of the Sahara Run an average depth of 500′ then consider the deepest “Moving Dunes” can be 1000′ deep, you will need some gargantuan turbine masts and deeply excavated turbine footings (down to bedrock) to place turbines “Just anywhere” in the Sahara. Same for Solar Panels, their bases would also need to be set deep to “Not be Disturbed” by Saharan shifting sands.
As as some readers will know the Sahara is not all sand dunes,it would be equally difficult to put wind turbines or solar farms on Gravel plains or salt flats either. The gravel would still need to be excavated to a stable surface and the salt would prove corrosive to panel supports. So that leaves the rocky Mesa areas and I’m not sure how much of a problem the stone might pose as foundation footing installations.
And on top of all that, the first desert sand storm would knock out every solar panel caught in its pash. Sand blasted panels become opaque and thus the light is diffused before it hits the photo - voltaic cells.
There is an kind of joy to be obtained from witnessing this particular techno-dream deflate. It reminds us that even the most elaborate green schemes are only as sound as their financial footings and, adherednce ti the laws of physics and geopolitical practicalities. When those are not taken into account, the utopian narrative gives way to something far more earthy: the simple recognition that expensive, complex, and foreign-dependent projects rarely survive contact with reality.
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