Portugal Eyes Atlantic Cable to Morocco, Aiming for a Safer Grid

Portugal’s government is quietly weighing a project that could redraw the country’s energy map: a high-voltage link to the Moroccan grid. If the numbers add up, residents, investors and digital nomads alike may soon see a sturdier, more diversified power network—one capable of shuttling clean electricity across two continents and buffering the peninsula against future blackouts.

Why expats should care

A single incident last April revealed in dramatic fashion how dependent Portugal still is on its neighbor to the east. When a fault in Spain triggered the worst Iberian blackout in a decade, Portuguese consumers had little choice but to wait while operators in Madrid stabilized the system. Analysts warn that such vulnerability can scare off foreign capital and frustrate remote workers whose livelihoods hinge on a steady broadband-friendly power supply. By creating a second international gateway—this time under the Atlantic—Lisbon hopes to secure redundancy, open a fresh corridor for surplus renewables and position the country as a bridge between Europe and North Africa.

From shock to strategy

The April outage did more than dim living-room lamps. It exposed the reality that, despite record-breaking investments in wind and solar, Portugal’s grid still has only one physical escape route: the lines that cross the border at the Minho River. Within weeks the new Environment and Energy Minister, Maria da Graça Carvalho, instructed grid operator REN to restart talks with its Moroccan counterpart, ONEE. Preliminary diplomatic calls have taken place, and a first minister-level meeting is penciled in for late summer. Officials frame the move not as a geopolitical pivot away from Spain, but as a pragmatic bid to add flexibility in an increasingly electrified economy.

How the cable might work

Engineers are talking about a 220 km high-voltage direct current (HVDC) cable, most likely between Tavira in the Algarve and the coastal node of B. Harchan, south of Tangier. Early estimates put the transfer capacity at 1 GW—enough to light roughly 1 million Portuguese homes—or to move excess solar from Alentejo toward booming North-African cities after sunset. Because Portugal would join an existing Spanish-Moroccan cluster, planners believe they can plug into shared converter stations, trimming the eye-watering bills associated with deep-sea installations.

Financing the deep-sea jump

The headline figure circulating in Lisbon is €325 M for the Portuguese side of a €650 M joint venture. Treasury officials hope to slice that burden with help from the EU’s Connecting Europe Facility, which this year opened a €600 M call for cross-border energy projects. Additional support could flow from the Global Gateway initiative or even the Horizon Europe research envelope, given the project’s potential to test next-generation HVDC technologies. Still, the economics hinge on a regulatory label called “Project of Mutual Interest.” Without it, Brussels money is off the table and private lenders will demand steeper returns.

Milestones to watch

By ministerial order REN and ONEE now have six months to file a pre-design and financing blueprint. If green-lit, environmental studies would stretch through 2026, seabed surveys into 2027, and full commissioning could arrive early in the next decade—roughly on par with Britain’s Xlinks venture, which uses similar hardware to pull Saharan solar to the UK. In parallel, Spain is due to switch on a third 700 MW link to Morocco in 2026, reinforcing the peninsula’s role as an emerging energy hub.

Voices from the field

Grid-stability researcher Ana Catarina Neves argues that a Moroccan tie-in offers the “missing piece” for Portugal’s 2030 goal of 93 % renewable electricity: when Atlantic winds lull, Saharan sun peaks, and vice-versa. Yet critics inside the Left Bloc worry that overreliance on foreign assets could weaken Lisbon’s leverage in future price negotiations. Meanwhile, UK climate-finance veteran David Clark notes that Portugal can tap a “rare sweet spot” where geography, policy and green-tech finance converge—if it moves fast enough.

Practical takeaways for foreign residents

For now your electricity bill will not change overnight, but the debate matters. A second interconnector lowers the odds of another peninsula-wide outage, a scenario that last spring disrupted everything from co-working hubs in Porto to refrigerated supply chains in the Algarve. Should the project secure EU funding, expect fresh tenders for smart-grid upgrades, new storage sites and perhaps a surge in green-hydrogen pilots. All of that makes Portugal an even more attractive base for climate-tech entrepreneurs and remote professionals seeking a country that takes energy resilience seriously.