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The Xlinks Morocco-UK Power Project plans to install 10.5 gigawatts of solar and wind capacity in the Moroccan desert and transmit up to 3.6 gigawatts of electricity to the United Kingdom through 3,800 kilometers of high-voltage direct current cable buried at the bottom of the Atlantic — bypassing Portugal and Spain before emerging in Wales, in a project that would be the largest submarine power transmission line ever built.
How the cable works and why 3,800 km is possible
High-voltage direct current — HVDC — submarine cables have existed for decades, but over much shorter distances. The Xlinks cable would be longer than any other ever built. The current record is held by NordLink, which connects Norway and Germany over about 620 km. The Xlinks would be six times longer.
Physics favors direct current for long-distance transmission: energy losses in direct current are much lower than in alternating current over distances above a few hundred kilometers, making transatlantic transmission economically viable at a level that would have been impossible with technology from 20 years ago. Converter stations — which transform the direct current coming from Morocco into alternating current for the British grid — are located at both ends.
The cable travels along the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean at depths reaching 4,000 meters, bypassing the Iberian Peninsula to the west. The route was chosen to avoid crossing other countries’ territories and their regulatory jurisdictions, keeping the project bilateral between Morocco and the United Kingdom.
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Why Morocco and why the United Kingdom
Morocco has some of the highest solar irradiation in Europe and Africa — in the Sahara Desert regions and the south of the country, solar energy is abundant, cheap, and predictable. The cost of solar megawatt-hour in Morocco is among the lowest in the world, thanks to the combination of extreme insolation and low land cost.
The United Kingdom, on the other hand, has a problem: its solar potential is limited by latitude and climate. Even with the world’s largest offshore wind fleet, the UK faces “droughts” of renewable generation during winter periods with little wind. Importing solar energy from Morocco addresses exactly this intermittency — the African solar peak occurs when British electricity demand is highest in summer, and the project’s integrated batteries provide energy during the night.
The project aims to supply between 7% and 8% of the UK’s electricity demand permanently. For a country that has set a goal of total decarbonization of the electricity sector by 2035, this share of firm and clean energy coming from abroad has strategic value that goes beyond the price of the megawatt-hour.
The technical and political challenges of a 3,800 km cable
A project of this scale has no operational precedent. Transatlantic telecommunications cables have a diameter the thickness of a human wrist — the Xlinks cable will have a much larger diameter, as it needs to carry gigawatts of electricity. Installation requires specialized cable-laying ships that operate for months, and any failure along the route requires repair at depths that challenge any existing ROV.
The total estimated investment is over 20 billion euros, making Xlinks one of the most expensive energy infrastructure projects ever proposed by a private company. The financing model is still under development — the project needs long-term power purchase agreements with the British government to enable bank financing.
Politically, the project is a milestone in Europe-Africa energy cooperation. The geopolitics of energy changed radically with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: Europe urgently needs to diversify sources. Morocco, which already exports electricity to Spain via an existing cable, now appears as the strategic energy hub of North Africa for the European continent.
What Xlinks signals for the future of global energy
Xlinks represents a paradigm shift: renewable energy does not need to be consumed where it is generated. Countries with an abundance of sun or wind can export their geographical advantage via cable — just as countries export oil or natural gas, but without the CO₂.
For Brazil — which has some of the highest solar irradiation in the world, especially in the Northeast — the Xlinks project is a mirror of what could be done with long-term planning and investment. Brazil already exports hydroelectric energy from the North to the South via continental transmission lines. Exporting solar to Europe via submarine cable would be the oceanic version of the same principle — and the South Atlantic separating Brazil’s Northeast from Africa is much shorter than Xlinks’ 3,800 km.
The timing of the Xlinks project is important to understand. The company was founded in 2020 and has already gone through several rounds of capital raising and license negotiations with the Moroccan government, the British energy regulator, and the regulators of the coastal countries through which the cable will pass. The project is at an advanced stage of technical and economic feasibility but has not yet reached the “final investment decision” (FID) — the moment when financiers sign off and construction begins. The estimate is that the FID will occur between 2026 and 2028, with commercial operation expected in the second half of the 2030s. This places Xlinks on the same horizon as other European energy infrastructure megaprojects — the North Sea offshore wind, green hydrogen corridors, Mediterranean basin submarine interconnections. It’s a long-term bet, but based on technology that already exists and a need that will only grow. The cost of the cable, which seems absurd today, will seem modest when compared to the cost of relying on Russian natural gas for another decade.
If Morocco is going to sell solar energy to the United Kingdom across the Atlantic, what is the distance between the sun of the northeastern hinterland and the outlet of a European home?
