Clean energy start-up pursues investors for world’s longest undersea cable

Plans for the world’s longest undersea cable connecting that could deliver nearly a tenth of the UK’s electricity have been given a fresh boost today, with investors circling the £16bn project.

Xlinks, a British clean energy start-up, is set to kick off talks for with prospective backers and is close to hiring bankers to work on the project, according to Sky News.

The company wants to construct a 3800km cable connecting North Africa and the UK, which could transmit enough electricity to power more than seven million British homes.

It argues the structure will be able to deliver energy at £48-per-megawatt hour, below the government’s own forecasts and therefore generating long-term savings for consumers.

It has recruited a board of industry titans to help deliver its vision, including former Tesco chief executive Sir Dave Lewis, who was installed last year as the company’s chairman.

Sir Ian Davis, the former Rolls Royce Holdings chairman, has also been recruited as a non-executive director.

The company has already secured as much as £40m in development funding, and is now advancing plans to secure the billions of pounds of financing required to construct vast windfarm and solar farm facilities in Morocco, alongside UK factories that would construct the subsea cable required for the initiative.

Manufacturing sites in Hunterston, Scotland – where a nuclear power plant is being decommissioned – on Teesside and at Port Talbot in Wales have all been secured and are now under development.

News of the development will be encouraging for the government, which unveiled its energy security strategy earlier this month which pledged to significantly ramp up renewable infrastructure.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, alongside the domestic industry crisis which has seen 29 suppliers collapse since September, has shifted the government’s focus to ensuring stable domestic supplies of energy and infrastructure resilient to future market shocks.