Former Tesco boss wants to send power from Morocco to Great Britain using subsea cable | Energy industry

In the southwestern part of Moroccoan array of wind and solar farms spanning an area the size of Greater London could soon generate green electricity powering more than 9 million British homes.

This is the steadfast vision of Sir Dave Lewis former boss of Tesco which hopes to build the world’s longest undersea power cable to harness North Africa’s renewable energy sources and power Britain’s clean energy programme.

If built, the 4,000km cable, buried in trenches on the seabed, would carry up to 8% of Britain’s electricity from renewable energy and battery projects in Morocco’s Tantan province to the Devon coast in less than a second.

Combined with Morocco’s perennial sunshine and consistently healthy wind speeds, the project could in theory provide Britain with a predictable and reliable source of renewable energy for around 19 hours a day all year round.

It’s an audacious undertaking that Lewis is willing to stake his reputation on. “When people first find out what we do, they say we’re crazy. Then we explain and they go along that curve until they get to the point where they ask, “Hey, why don’t we do this? Why don’t we do this already?” he says.

Lewis took over as executive chairman at Xlinks, the company behind the plans, in 2020 after delivering a five-year rescue plan to bring in Britain’s biggest retailer back from the brink of collapse. As he prepared to leave the supermarket chain in a “position of strength”, he began looking for opportunities to play a role in tackling the climate crisis.

“It would have been very easy to stay at Tesco because in many ways the hard work had already been done. But I’m worried about climate change and I think we need to do something about it,” he says.

He has since negotiated with six energy secretaries over the past four years in the hope of reaching a deal that would allow the UK-Morocco project to go live by the end of the decade.

A near-constant flow of clean electricity could start supplying the power grid by 2030, he says, in time to drive the government’s goal of creating a clean energy system by the end of the decade and meet its new ambition to cut carbon emissions of the UK by 81% compared to 1990 levels. until 2035

Lewis’s easy confidence in the project and what it could mean for both the UK and the Moroccan economy did not translate into a quick process of engaging with government officials. It’s been more than a year since the government designated Xlinks as a project of national importance, but Lewis is still waiting for the green light.

Although the project does not need government investment, it requires a contract that guarantees a stable price for the electricity it supplies, which will be paid through energy bills. Lewis puts the price of this contract at between £70 and £80 per megawatt hour (MWh), which is less than the deal struck with the developers of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station and in line with the expected costs of future offshore wind farms.

In the meantime, he has assembled a team of high-profile investors from across the energy industry to help raise the £100m needed to develop the project. Among them are the French energy giant TotalEnergies, Abu Dhabi National energy Company (TAQA), the investment arm of General Electric, Britain’s Octopus Energy and its founder Greg Jackson.

Jackson says his only concern about the project is that he didn’t think of it himself. “If oil and gas companies can build pipelines around the world to pump out toxic, flowing substances, then we really should be able to run power lines – and it should be easier.” This is extremely feasible, but there has been no political and economic case for it. That is changing. We have adoption of renewable energy sources around the world. When I heard about Xlinks I wanted to get to know them – I really wanted to support them personally and Octopus supports them too.”

Lewis’ lack of experience in the energy industry is a plus, according to Jackson, who built Octopus Energy from a start-up to a £9bn energy company in less than a decade after a career in technology. “When you’re an outsider, you can see things more clearly. Dave doesn’t see things through the lens of outdated regulations. That means he can identify the economics that actually work, then hire a team that includes experts who work deep in the plumbing industry in the industry who can deliver it,” he says.

Project implementation is likely to be a hurdle for risk-averse government officials. Britain’s checkered history of launching large, one-of-a-kind infrastructure projects haunts Whitehall, and Xlinks itself it has already been postponed for a year. But Louis is determined to prove that executing the megaproject is easier than it might seem.

Every element of the project – the solar farms, the wind farms, the batteries, the high-voltage submarine cables – has been tried and tested, so increasing its ambition would be a matter of repetition, he says. It has also pre-secured the project’s supply chains and could source up to 50% of the cable from a planned cable factory in Scotland if it can get government backing.

But even among those who believe the project can be delivered, there is still likely to be concern that they are relying so heavily on a foreign country for a significant share of Britain’s energy. On this matter Lewis is pragmatic.

“Forgive my simplistic expression of this, but we are an island,” he shrugs. “The idea that the UK can be self-sufficient in almost anything is wrong. The UK must develop this bilateral relationship and must invest in and protect it. But if the benefit is great enough, why not do it?”

“There may be challenges, but you have to ask yourself if the magnetic north of the idea is strong enough to make it worth investing your time and energy in pursuing it. I thought it was, and my commitment to it only grew as I learned more,” he says.