The abundant sun of northern Africa may soon power Europe’s homes and businesses, as European leaders consider connecting massive North African solar projects to undersea power cables to free their continent from Russian energy.
The sudden need for alternative energy following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine means that North African solar projects intended to send electricity to Europe are under active discussion, officials and experts say, as European leaders see a straightforward way to secure large amounts of green power. Past proposals have suggested that North African energy projects could meet as much as 15 percent of Europe’s electricity demand.
The interest is especially high in Morocco, where undersea electrical cables already cross the 10-mile span to Spain at the Strait of Gibraltar.
Moroccan leaders — who never had any fossil fuels to export — see a chance to promote their country as a renewable energy giant. Europe, meanwhile, wants to hit its ambitious climate goals and address its need for non-Russian energy at the same time. The result is a confluence of interests that could lead to a sudden leap forward for Europe’s renewable energy uptake. More broadly, it is a test for the concept of shipping green energy from sunny parts of the world to regions where the sun doesn’t shine as brightly.
“The question of energy security, or the question of energy sovereignty, is more than ever a major consideration. Reliability is key,” Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita said late last year after signing a “green partnership” in which the European Union pledged investments in Moroccan energy projects.
Europe alone doesn’t have “the potential for the scale to create the dimensions of the renewable energy that we need,” said European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans, speaking alongside Bourita.
World’s largest concentrated solar plant
Morocco is already home to a major solar power plant, with plans underway to build more. So European leaders see it as a natural partner.
“Europe is really in the midst of a deep soul-searching exercise in the energy sector. It’s a proper crisis,” said Laura El-Katiri, a fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations who specializes in North African renewable energy. The split from Russian energy “is going to be the catalyst that will turn the tide towards cleaner energy more than all the climate negotiations and other things.”
Morocco in recent years has built a massive solar project in the desert near the city of Ouarzazate, installing mirrors stretching more than five miles that focus the sun’s rays on a central tower packed with tubes of molten salts that absorb heat and function as a massive battery. The reflected heat — a solar technique known as a concentrated solar plant — can help drive power generation for hours after the sun sets.
The concentrated solar plant, the world’s largest, looks a bit like a temple to renewable energy, with an ethereally bright, glowing beacon standing tall above the barren desert plain. The installation, which is visible from space, is estimated to be able to generate about 1,500 gigawatt hours annually, a little less than a third of the output of the smallest U.S. nuclear power plant.
Industry experts say there is little practical barrier to significantly expanding solar projects in Morocco, since there are wide expanses of land that aren’t being used by farmers and don’t have significant economic value. Undersea cables also aren’t technically difficult or prohibitively costly given the relatively short distances they need to travel underneath the Mediterranean, they say.
North Africa has an installable capacity of 2,792 gigawatts of solar power and 223 gigawatts of wind power, the International Renewable Energy Agency estimates. El-Katiri said that could generate more than 2½ times Europe’s 2021 electricity output.
‘Unlimited solar potential’
This isn’t the first time Europe has looked toward solar power from North Africa: An unrealized project more than a decade ago called Desertec aimed to provide about 15 percent of Europe’s energy needs with a $436 billion investment in solar power in the region. It ultimately collapsed amid an economic crisis in Europe and an influx of cheap fossil fuel from Russia.
Desertec’s promotional materials placed a small red square on part of the Sahara, saying that landmass was sufficient to meet the entire world’s electricity needs with solar power. Some analysts say the square wasn’t realistically big enough. But the vast potential of desert solar remains, El-Katiri said.
More than a decade later, the economics of ambitious projects make a lot more sense, analysts said, with the cost of solar power dropping and the cost of fossil energy higher than before the invasion of Ukraine.
“The comparative advantage is pretty straightforward as long as policies don’t discriminate against it,” said Jonathan Walters, an energy economist who specializes in the Mediterranean and is a former director at the World Bank.
The amount of electricity that could be generated in North Africa and the Middle East “depends almost entirely on how rapidly Europe wants to green its energy supply,” Walters said. “There’s almost unlimited potential.”
Challenges remain: Large-scale solar farms need water to operate, which can be difficult to source in the desert. Proponents of the projects say water needs are dropping, and that some water could be provided by desalinization plants running on renewable energy.
Some social activists have also raised questions about whether big projects replicate some of the colonial relationships of previous centuries, when European powers exploited African nations for their resources but offered little in return. European leaders now say they want to make sure North Africa’s domestic energy industry is developing at the same time any megaprojects for Europe proceed.
Morocco also remains a monarchy where opportunities to express dissent are limited at best, although proponents of deeper ties note that the same challenge exists in many fossil fuel superpowers.
To many Moroccans involved in the industry, selling energy to Europe is a pathway to building their own country’s strength.
“Other countries leverage the fact that they have oil. We don’t. We leverage wind and solar,” said Mohamed Alaoui, managing director of Africa Climate Solutions, a Casablanca-based sustainable development consultancy. “In Morocco we see it as a huge opportunity.”