The news is still not official, but it appears clear that London has said no to the Xlinks First power cable project, a mammoth $33 billion (£24 billion) infrastructure, and one of the most ambitious and discussed projects to link African green energy to European markets.

At least $6.5 billion of investments were needed in the UK to realise the projects. The shareholders proposing the subsea power cable asked London to secure a Contract for Difference agreement, with fixed price for electricity locked for many years (possibly decades) to make sure

of a sufficient return for the investment. Apparently, even the pro-climate Labour government, very sensible to renewable energy and decarbonisation, does not want to undertake such a risky project. The size of the undersea part of the infrastructure would be around 5 times

bigger than the longest functioning undersea power cable in the world between the UK and Denmark. Promoters designed Xlinks with a 11.5 GW of capacity, all dedicated to solar and wind energy produced in Morocco, one of the African nations investing more on green energy over the

last decade. Now, without the UK, much of the investments made in the project by 🇫🇷France TotalEnergies 🇦🇪UAE Taqa 🇬🇧UK Octopus Energy will have to find another electricity purchaser instead of the UK. Could this be🇩🇪Germany?

To explore the geopolitics of the energy transition ➡️The China-U.S. Trade War Goes Nuclear 🫴https://rebrand.ly/RE2496 ➡️Blame Game and Electricity Chess 🫴https://rebrand.ly/RE2405