BRUSSELS: One of the most interesting solar projects around, TuNur, hopes to generate two nuclear power plants’ worth of renewable electricity in the Tunisian desert, export it to Italy via a 1,000km high-voltage DC cable and connect it to European grids as far afield as the UK, where it could power over 2m homes.
Three developments are helping and could set a precedent for further projects: strides in the cost-effectiveness both of undersea transmission cables and solar power, the EU’s Energy Union and climate packages, and the new Tunisian government’s liberalisation of its energy laws.
In technological terms the project looks achievable. A €10bn joint venture between British solar developer Nur Energie and a group of Tunisian, Maltese and British investors including London-based Low Carbon, TuNur plans to use Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) – unlike solar photovoltaic panels (PV) – to generate a potential 2.5GW of electricity on 100km2 of desert in South West Tunisia by 2018.
Thousands of mirrors will concentrate sunlight onto a
