The Tunisian-British partnership TuNur hopes to build one of the world’s largest thermodynamic solar plants here, on collective lands once home to nomadic groups.
TuNur plans to fulfil this ambition by building the world’s largest solar plant. Behind the name are a handful of well-known investors from the City of London who have taken a lively interest in the promise of green finance
With persistently high oil prices and mounting supply challenges, Europe has pragmatically tried to speed its transition to lower-cost renewables ‒ by outsourcing. It covets the bountiful sunlight of its southernmost Mediterranean neighbours whose solar potential is among the highest in the world.
The country, ensnared in a financial crisis, is struggling to achieve its climate objectives. Many foreign investors are hungry for its solar supply – mostly for export to the North. The electricity-generating mirrors may look green, but they reek of an extractivist Europe greedy for its neighbours’ resources – a greener version of fossil fuel exportation.
Passed in 2015 and amended in 2019, law 2015-12 relating to the production of electricity from renewable energy thus liberalised Tunisia’s electricity market, despite fierce labour opposition. Because STEG union members refused to connect the country’s first private photovoltaic plant to the national grid, all renewable energy projects approved by the energy ministry remained at a standstill until late 2022.
Despite the tension between STEG, Tunisian institutions and private companies, TuNur [the Tunisian-British partnership] managed to carve out space in the local market with its 2019 construction of a small photovoltaic facility in Gabès. In August 2022 the company announced an initial $1.6bn investment toward its flagship project.
The TuNur project is in fact modelled on the Noor (‘light’ in Arabic) mega-plant in Morocco’s southeastern desert…The complex, which King Mohammed VI opened in February 2016, is still the world’s largest thermodynamic plant. It symbolises a national policy focused on green energy development. The kingdom boasts that 37% of its electricity comes from renewables, well ahead of what many European countries have accomplished.
Beyond the economic losses it has generated, the plant is also accused of using water-intensive technology in a perpetually water-stressed region where there have been ongoing protests since 2017. Residents decry the appropriation of water resources by major state-promoted agricultural, mining and energy projects.
Farmers and residents complain that water has become increasingly scarce. The lake formed by the El Mansour Eddahbi Dam, which supplies the entire Draa Valley, is used heavily for maintaining the mirrors and for cooling – crucial in this desert setting. Currently at just 12% of its capacity, the lake is the region’s primary source of both drinking water and irrigation.
In the early days of France’s Third Republic, official propaganda used ‘solar conquest’ to symbolise modernity. And the myth never faded: presented as an achievement that could free mankind of its constraints, it continued to inspire literature and the imagination. In the latter half of the 19th century, Augustin Mouchot, a prolific inventor, created a series of steam engines powered by concentrated sunlight. He was among the pioneers who saw North African sunshine’s potential to fuel European industrial expansion.
Mouchot’s solar utopia soon lost momentum because coal, then Europe’s primary energy source, was so cheaply available. The inventor had to halt his research, but the idea of harnessing solar energy survived. It resurfaced throughout the 20th century, eventually becoming the policy centrepiece it is today.
By connecting the solar plants to Europe – via high-voltage cables under the Mediterranean – the industrialists hoped to cover 15% of the continent’s electricity needs by 2050, thereby allowing continental economies to grow ‘in harmony with the environment’. It was to be ‘the greatest idea of the 21st century’.
According to a recent report by the Tunisian Observatory of Economy, most megaproject-related jobs last ‘for the building and startup phases only’. The same ambiguities were at work during the colonial period. Industrialisation was supposed to benefit local populations, whose standard of living would improve – and all the while colonists funnelled their resources to the mainland.
‘This is solar extractivism,’ Bouet says, acknowledging a growing criticism of the projects. The term has typically referred to the significant impact that mining materials such as metals or hydrocarbons, for the exclusive benefit of wealthy countries, has on locals and the environment. In this case, Europe is outsourcing its energy transition while the countries that have historically emitted the most greenhouse gasses dodge responsibility for the current climate crisis.
The shift to renewables … highlights the link between extractivism and authoritarianism.
Full article is on Le Monde Diplomatique, June 2024 issue
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