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Greece agree to link power grids12/13/2023 reduce its reliance on burning imported natural gas to generate electricity. In January, Morocco’s ambassador to Britain, Hakim Hajoui, touted the project as capable of creating “thousands of jobs in both countries,” as well as “enhancing local ecosystems” in Morocco and helping the U.K. The cost of the proposed 10,500-megawatt Xlinks project is expected to be $22 billion, half for the solar and wind energy farms and half for the cables. But now these facilities are increasingly being lined up to supply green energy to industrial neighbors to the north, through new intercontinental submarine cables, or to locally manufacture “green” hydrogen for shipping to Europe, where demand is growing fast for low-carbon industrial fuels.īut the biggest megaproject aims to lay the world’s longest high-voltage submarine cables for 2,300 miles from giant energy farms in the Moroccan desert past the Atlantic coastlines of Portugal, Spain, and France to southwest England, from where it could provide 8 percent of the United Kingdom’s electricity. Their initial aim has been to boost domestic power supplies and reduce reliance on coal. Morocco’s Noor and Egypt’s Benban solar farms are among the largest in the world. Solar and wind farms are already proliferating south of the Mediterranean. And analysts fear that this will all happen with minimal community consultation or ecological assessment. Livestock pastures that have been grazed by nomadic tribes for millennia will be commandeered. Result: Europe’s drive to end its reliance on Russian natural gas supplies, triggered by the Ukraine conflict, is resulting in a rush to install giant solar energy farms and lay underwater cables to tap into North Africa’s abundant renewable energy.īut there are growing concerns about the environmental impacts in Africa of Europe’s outsourcing of its energy needs. And North Africa has a lot more room for them than densely populated Europe. US intelligence has implicated the prince in the killing of Khashoggi, a charge the prince and Saudi authorities deny.Īfter Greece, Prince Mohammed will head to France.Solar panels in sun-rich North Africa generate up to three times more energy than in Europe. Mitsotakis is among Western leaders who have visited Riyadh since the murder of Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, which sparked an outcry in the West and tainted the prince's image as a reformist pushing to open up Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter.įrance's President Emanuel Macron travelled to the Saudi capital last year and US President Joe Biden met with Prince Mohammed on a trip to the Gulf state earlier this month as Washington works to ease tension with Riyadh. Mitsotakis hailed Prince Mohammed's visit as an opportunity to further discuss regional developments and "how to further cement this important relationship between our two countries, placing particular emphasis on economic co-operation". we can provide Greece, and southwest Europe through Greece, with much cheaper renewable energy," Prince Mohammed said, sitting alongside Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.īilateral agreements were also signed in the fields of energy and military co-operation, among others. Prince Mohammed's last official visit outside the Middle East was to Japan in 2019 for a G20 summit. The agreement was finalised during a visit by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to Athens, his first to a European Union member state since the 2018 killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
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