In its quest for green energy, Europe is looking to North Africa, where vast solar and wind farms are proliferating and plans call for submarine cables that will carry electricity as far as Britain. But this rush for clean power is raising serious environmental concerns.
By Fred Pearce
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February 16, 2023
Solar panels in sun-rich North Africa generate up to three times more energy than in Europe. And North Africa has a lot more room for them than densely populated Europe. Result: Europe’s drive to end its reliance on Russian natural gas supplies, triggered by the Ukraine conflict, is resulting in a rush to install giant solar energy farms and lay underwater cables to tap into North Africa’s abundant renewable energy.
But there are growing concerns about the environmental impacts in Africa of Europe’s outsourcing of its energy needs. Desert ecosystems will be decimated. Livestock pastures that have been grazed by nomadic tribes for millennia will be commandeered. And analysts fear that this will all happen with minimal community consultation or ecological assessment.
Solar and wind farms are already proliferating south of the Mediterranean. Morocco’s Noor and Egypt’s Benban solar farms are among the largest in the world. Their initial aim has been to boost domestic power supplies and reduce reliance on coal. But now these facilities are increasingly being lined up to supply green energy to industrial neighbors to the north, through new intercontinental submarine cables, or to locally manufacture “green” hydrogen for shipping to Europe, where demand is growing fast for low-carbon industrial fuels.
The biggest megaproject aims to connect giant wind and solar farms in the Moroccan desert to southwest England.
Morocco, the North African country furthest advanced on this road, is already exporting solar power to Europe via two existing power links with Spain. Last year it signed a new deal with the European Union to expand power exports. Egypt, host of the most recent UN climate conference (COP27) is considering three proposals for cables to link to Greece. Another planned submarine cable that would link new solar farms in the desert of southern Tunisia to Italy’s electricity grid has funding promised from the European Union (EU) and World Bank.
But the biggest megaproject aims to lay the world’s longest high-voltage submarine cables for 2,300 miles from giant energy farms in the Moroccan desert past the Atlantic coastlines of Portugal, Spain, and France to southwest England, from where it could provide 8 percent of the United Kingdom’s electricity. The cost of the proposed 10,500-megawatt Xlinks project is expected to be $22 billion, half for the solar and wind energy farms and half for the cables.
In January, Morocco’s ambassador to Britain, Hakim Hajoui, touted the project as capable of creating “thousands of jobs in both countries,” as well as “enhancing local ecosystems” in Morocco and helping the U.K. reduce its reliance on burning imported natural gas to generate electricity. Xlinks executives say the cable could start delivering power as early as 2027 and be completed by 2030, though they complain that political turbulence in Britain in the past year has slowed sign-off for the government price subsidy required by potential investors.
North Africa’s sometimes autocratic governments have already shown themselves adept at delivering rapid construction of large renewable-energy projects in the Sahara. Egypt’s 1,650-megawatt Benban solar park, near Aswan on the Nile River, was completed within two years of receiving funding.
And Europe is keen to tap in. Last May, as the Ukraine conflict intensified, the European Commission, representing 27 EU members, launched REPowerEU, “a plan to rapidly reduce dependence on Russian fossil fuels and fast forward the green transition.” It provides political and financial backing for cross-border investments to stimulate renewable energy imports from North Africa, and it is considered crucial to enabling the EU to achieve its goal of cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 55 percent by 2030.
But there are ethical concerns about Africa exporting so much power. Most people in Morocco and Egypt have electricity, but less than half the continent’s population is connected to reliable power grids. Laura El-Katiri, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, a Berlin-based think tank, points out that Morocco has connections via a regional power pool that could send green electricity to most nations in West Africa, while Egypt is similarly linked to most of East Africa. But both countries’ electricity exports are currently earmarked for European markets instead.
Critics also point to environmental and social concerns. Proponents of solar and wind farms in North Africa routinely describe the land they are taking as remote, empty desert. But even the Sahara Desert is not deserted, especially the coastal areas favored to link up with submarine cables.
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