[mike_hearn]

Brexit isn't mentioned anywhere and the physics of it would be the same regardless of the EU existing or not. The reason to go direct to Morocco are that transmission through regular AC grids would lose virtually all the power before it gets anywhere near the UK. 10GW is a hell of a load and you can't just pretend a grid is a bathtub at these scales.

But as you brought it up, even if there was a semi-conductor breakthrough tomorrow the political reasons to go direct would still be there. The EU wants the UK to be subservient to the Commission for ideological, political and economic reasons. The UK doesn't want to be back in that situation. The EU would absolutely make energy transit dependent on all manner of entirely irrelevant topics - fish is the current one but there would be others - and thus making electricity supplies dependent on the EU would end up being equivalent to being sucked back in, not as a member state but as a vassal state.

[sofixa]

> The EU wants the UK to be subservient to the Commission for ideological, political and economic reasons. The UK doesn't want to be back in that situation.

What a load of Brexiteer crap. The UK was never subservient, they were among the top decision makers and powers in the EU. Brexit UK wants to have its cake and eat it too and is simply impossible. You can't be independent from the EU on trade and power simply because of the proximity and history. Blindly cutting off your nose to spite the EU is as dumb as it was when all of this started. As soon as the UK recognises it needs the EU as much as the EU needs it, all will be better.

Few egregious examples of the UK being intentionally obtuse to spite the EU while also harming itself - refusals to accept existing treaties on a bunch of stuff, refusal to accept treaties they signed a few months ago. The whole NI question for which they still haven't accepted a solution. The fish debacle ( the UK refusing to license EU-based ships).

[tinco]

Stop being so adverserial. Parent hasn't stated any pro-brexit sentiment so just assume they're arguing in good faith.

The whole idea of the EU is that all nations in it are subservient to the commission. We like it that way because that makes the collaboration more rational and it makes the rising tide lift all the boats. Wether you agree with it or not, the idea of the Brexit is that the UK can be strong without the EU, possibly even stronger. Wether that will happen remains to be seen.

But how can you say they can't be independent of the EU in power while commenting on an article that's literally about them establishing power bypassing the EU?

I'd love for the UK to come back to us in the EU. But their "intentional obtuse"-ness is exactly what they should be doing to make good on their promises to the citizens of the UK.

[arlort]

> The whole idea of the EU is that all nations in it are subservient to the commission

It really really isn't though

[tinco]

It really is though

[dankboys]

Then it's even more useless than being an auditor at the commission

[tremon]

The whole idea of the EU is that all nations in it are subservient to the commission.

How is that statement different from stating that the whole idea of the UK is that all countries in the UK are subservient to the Cabinet?

[tinco]

It's not, that's why the UK felt their sovereignty was compromised and they took it back. The EU allows for that to happen without violence.

[detritus]

This is an absolutely valueless comment, so I apologise: but I just wanted to thank you for writing one of most sincerely level-headed responses I've seen in relation to Brexit, and from someone 'over the fence' at that.

I aspire to be as considerate and reasonable in my dialogue on the subject, as much as I'd like it to go away (much like most Europeans, I guess!) :)

[sofixa]

But they aren't arguing in good faith, because this bit:

> The EU wants the UK to be subservient to the Commission for ideological, political and economic reasons

Is categorically and empirically false. The Commission doesn't have an ideology, and doesn't want subservience from anyone. Their job is cooperation and improvement.

[tinco]

> The Commission doesn't have an ideology, and doesn't want subservience from anyone. Their job is cooperation and improvement.

No, the commission does have an ideology, it's encoded in the Treaty of European Union. For example "founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities".

Also subservience is encoded in the treaties, for example when you sign the treaty you agree that the court of the European Union becomes your highest court, and that European law overrides your national law. Effectively any court decision can be overruled by the European Court of Justice if it conflicts with European law.

Besides the law there's all sorts of other restrictions where a nations interest are subservient to those of the union as a whole. Usually to prevent a nation from giving their local industries an edge over those in other European countries.

[mike_hearn]

The UK had to implement EU decisions and laws, including those the government and voters directly disagreed with. That is what subservient means, in this context.

The fish debacle ( the UK refusing to license EU-based ships).

There are lots of licensed EU fishing vessels. Note that Jersey isn't actually a part of the UK, technically it's a Crown Dependency. Anyway. The full story of the dispute is much more complicated than that:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Jersey_dispute

Summary:

- After Brexit an amnesty period was agreed before the new fishing permissions were enforced on UK/Jersey territorial waters.

- French fishermen reacted by adopting unsustainable fishing techniques like aggressive trawling. Basically trying to extract as much marine wealth as possible before they were restricted. "Young accused French trawlers of "breaking the spirit of the amnesty" and that due to recent dredging by French trawlers that Jersey's marine ecology "won’t take this for much longer and, if it goes on, we will have to close the area off for years". This hadn't been anticipated in the agreement and appears to have poisoned relations from the get-go.

- The agreement involved granting licenses to fishermen who had been fishing there previously and could evidence that. The French authorities weren't submitting valid evidence to the Jersey authorities (blaming bureaucratic screwups like lost documents).

- Because the evidence wasn't meeting the requirements, licenses weren't always being issued quickly.

So far, ordinary bureaucracy. It should have never really reached public attention at all, as it could have been sorted out between the local authorities. Unfortunately what followed was this:

1. Blockades of Jersey harbor by the French fishermen, with the French government doing nothing.

2. French boats were repeatedly caught illegally fishing, claiming they'd been told by the French government they could fish wherever they wanted. See the trawling problems above.

3. Shortly after, the French government banned Jersey fishermen from landing fish in France. No justification was given. This was in violation of the agreement and Jersey thus said it'd appeal to the EU Commission. That was not only ignored but the French simply escalated the ban to include all freight movements, again, in plain violation of the agreements.

4. The French government then escalated again and threatened multiple times to cut off Jersey's electricity supply in retaliation.

From the UK's perspective this was all well out of proportion to the scale of the problem. Also it involved unilateral violations of the agreement by France, no workable suggestions for how to do things better and after that an MEP argued that it should be escalated to full blown trade sanctions. Without passing judgement on which side was "right" in this dispute it's obvious why the UK would want to diversity energy supplies away from the EU.

[gghhzzgghhzz]

If you were one of the big 3 then you pretty much get to decide what laws / fines apply and what don't. This was often used to the advantage of the British governments to claim that they were being forced into doing something that they actually wanted to do, but would have an issue passing domestically.

Fishing 'debacle' was because the UK governments have no interest in fishing nor in the far wider issue of the sustainability and viability of costal communities. They were happy to give away fishing rights because that's what the needs of the markets demand. They only become interested in fishermen/women when they think there are some votes in it. Same for Macron.

It's all extremely cynical. And I say this as someone who voted for Brexit, and would do so again.

[mike_hearn]

In this case the dispute was with the independent Jersey government and part of their justification for the number of licenses provided was sustainability. You could argue that this justification was a lie I suppose, but it'd be good to have some evidence to support that.

OTOH, the UK government recently (2020) passed laws that overrode Jersey's independence in this regard and there were rumours that the UK was getting ready to basically give the EU what they wanted here in return for concessions in other areas, much to the outrage of people on Jersey itself. However, that hasn't materialized. So I guess we'll see to what extent you're proven right.

[mrlonglong]

Boring codswallop.

[_fizz_buzz_]

"Securing Britain's energy supply by diversifying from EU interconnectors"

Also, it's kind of funny how you say it has absolutely nothing to do with Brexit and immediately jump into an anti-EU rant, probably not the smoothest transition :D

[logifail]

> "Securing Britain's energy supply by diversifying from EU interconnectors"

Honestly, the EU27 have their own home-grown grid problems to deal with[0], helping third countries transit power through the EU territories must be right at the bottom of the list!

Austria and Germany had a single electricity price zone ... until October 2018, one of the reasons blamed for the split was "slow grid expansion"[1].

[0] https://www.euractiv.com/section/electricity/news/german-ele...

[1] https://www.apg.at/api/sitecore/projectmedia/download?id=24f...

[alibarber]

This is basically my reading of the situation. After reading the article I was certain the comment section here would look like this, but anyway, my take home is ‘technological advances mean it is now easier just to lay a long cable on the sea floor than all of the political maneuvering needed to transit power across multiple countries’

Obviously- that may be wrong, but let’s see, would be cool if it’s true.

[mike_hearn]

I don't see that as an anti-EU rant but more like a neutral description of the situation. The EU has been completely open that its ideal scenario now is that the UK would agree to implement all EU rules and laws as before, but without being a member. It has been willing to enforce trade sanctions on the financial system in order to try and get what it wants in unrelated areas like immigration law. And the EU did nothing when one of its two most powerful members asserted its intention to use electricity supply cutoffs to gain leverage in fishing rights disputes.

These things are all matters of fact. From the EU's perspective these things are not "negative" exactly, but merely the way they play the game. Everything is connected to everything else and any inter-dependency may become leverage in any unrelated area of cooperation at any time.

[yakak]

Not sure about the description of the region, but UK legitimizes Morocco's position in land disputes to undermine EU seems a possibility to me.

[robonerd]

Can you expand on the EU's stake in Moroccan border disputes? I'm aware of the West Sahara / SADR situation, but my impression is that the EU has little legitimate stake in that dispute except for their desire to fish in those waters. And Europe seems willing to deal with Morocco for permission to do that.

[yakak]

I was hoping someone with more knowledge of the situation would chime in..

My understanding is that:

Acting as a group the EU has made some "pragmatic" decisions like fishing in western Sahara waters, but probably found it relatively easy to turn down less economic and/or more illegal activities as a block. If the UK were to more fully ignore UN decisions and accept natural resource from the disputed lands, the loss of respecting the rules is much more a loss for the EU than Morocco.

[dmitriid]

> The EU wants the UK to be subservient to the Commission for ideological, political and economic reasons

You mean, the UK was one of the three largest powers in the EU with all the power to influence its policy and direction which it did.

Instead, the UK adopted the attitude of "we are a superpower, you owe us everything, we owe you nothing" to which the planet's largest economic union and one of the planet's largest markets calmly responded, "u wot mate?"

About a year into the whole Brexit brouhaha the EU said, look, here are the various agreements and levels of agreements we have with all the countries [1] (taking from the amazing short overview here [2]). You don't want Norway style because "it's EU with extra steps", you don't want Switzerland-style because "same thing", you don't want Ukraine or Turkey-style because you don't want to be bound by EU trade agreements etc.

At every step of the way UK's reaction was "these Brussels democrats are smothering our great independent nation, they must give us everything we want". That's not how negotiations work. Especially not with an economic block of ~450 million people who are your biggest trading partners.

And after all that puffing and chest-beating, almost seven years into the whole Brexit ordeal UK also "suddenly" discovered the whole Northern Ireland border issue. Which tells you a lot about the competence of your government.

So, no. UK went from being the country with the largest influence on EU policy to an outside country that has to deal with the EU on the same terms as every other country from outside the EU.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/m2e5PGa.png

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agZ0xISi40E

[arinlen]

> Brexit isn't mentioned anywhere and the physics of it would be the same regardless of the EU existing or not.

The point of mentioning Brexit is to stress that the physics alone makes this sort of project hard to justify on technical grounds, specially when there is a wealth of renewable energy projects right around Britain's corner.

You need to be specially motivated to circumvent any of the low-hanging fruit projects with European nations to head down to Africa to get your electricity.

[mike_hearn]

I remember doing a bit of spare time research into getting power from the Sahara desert when I was a school kid. The idea is obvious - solar power requires lots of sunshine and land that isn't being used for anything. The UK doesn't have that, the Sahara desert does.

If it's an idea obvious enough to occur to a teenager 20 years ago it hardly requires politics to explain why it comes up now, does it? At the time I gave up on the idea because either I didn't find out about HVDC or it wasn't as effective as it is now. Transmission losses seemed to kill the idea. Now apparently that's more or less solved and other issues dominate like manufacturing costs and mineral availability.

As for renewables being abundant near by - where? UK already built tons of windmills. You can't get baseload-level renewable power from adding more of those because there are days when the wind stops blowing. As for solar in Europe, land is at a premium there and they're already wanting to use available resources for their own needs, rightly so. Also worth considering - for unclear reasons global wind speeds have been slowing down over time. Long term wind projects need to factor that in to their economic calculations. Solar doesn't have that issue.

[arinlen]

> I remember doing a bit of spare time research into getting power from the Sahara desert when I was a school kid. The idea is obvious (...)

I'm afraid you failed to understand the point.

There is no question that Morocco has an impressive potential in solar power. Morocco's hydrogen production project is very exciting.

But that's besides the point, and not the issue being discussed.

What clearly is a bonkers idea and has no technical nor strategic justification, let alone in a national security perspective, is the UK wasting it's resources trying to get renewable sources way down in Africa, specially when there are already a wealth of projects already underway right next door.

For perspective, the Dogger bank is home for some wind farm projects which are already similar energy production capacity, such as the Dogger Bank Wind Farm.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogger_Bank_Wind_Farm

[mike_hearn]

The project isn't funded so currently the UK isn't wasting or spending any resources on it at all, it's just a company that'd like people to give it money.

Nonetheless, adding more windmills isn't going to materially change anything at this point. To push renewables further requires them to be reliable enough to start displacing base load.

I don't personally think this cable idea is good either but more because of the costs and risks of cable cuts (possibly deliberate), than the belief that it can be done in other ways.

[matthewdgreen]

But presumably an interconnect from Morocco->Spain would free up export resources from France, which could then be exported to the UK via a shorter interconnect. Similarly, direct HVDC connections can be run overland rather than under the sea. I'm not saying these solutions are better. I'm asking how much of the current proposal is due to political constraints and how much is actually the best engineering solution given the resources available.

[nbevans]

Exactly. The last couple years has really let the mask slip on what the EU stands for and they've made it expressly clear how they intend to treat the UK going forward - despite the UK's best efforts to forge a genuinely strong relationship, this has been rebuffed at every opportunity. We are "fair game" to them now. So it makes complete sense to design future energy projects with sovereignty in mind.

[WastingMyTime89]

> the UK's best efforts to forge a genuinely strong relationship

Last time I checked the UK was still the sole country in the world refusing an official ambassador status to the representative of the EU and the sole country to have threaten to unilaterally withdraw from an international treaty with the EU in clear breach of international law. I think your definition of genuine and mine differ substantially.

[nbevans]

Check again - the ambassador status was granted last year.

The genuine best efforts spanned from 2017-ish (negotiations didn't start in 2016 after the vote) to 2019. It took a while for the UK to realise the EU no longer wanted to be friendly and cordial, and that's when the UK's own stance finally changed.

A bilateral treaty between the UK and EU is not "international law". A bilateral treaty contains exit clauses that can be invoked if necessary. The Geneva Convention is an example of an international law. Though I don't know specifically what you are referring to in your example.

[WastingMyTime89]

> The genuine best efforts spanned from 2017-ish (negotiations didn't start in 2016 after the vote) to 2019. It took a while for the UK to realise the EU no longer wanted to be friendly and cordial, and that's when the UK's own stance finally changed.

The UK wasted everyone time during 3 years asking for things which it was told at the beginning were impossible and kept reneging on their agreements during the whole thing. The UK never made genuine best efforts. You have to be a die-hard brexiter and far removed for reality to start believing that.

I was specifically speaking about the Irish agreement which the UK threatened to withdraw from without respecting the exit clauses.

Anyway, I just wanted to re-establish a modicum of truth regarding the way the negociations went. I propose I now go back to my usual attitude towards the UK - general disinterest.

[nbevans]

"I was specifically speaking about the Irish agreement which the UK threatened to withdraw from without respecting the exit clauses."

A veiled threat is not breaking any clauses. You should look up the number of times the Swiss (and others) have threatened to withdraw from so-and-so agreement with the EU. It isn't new. The EU has dozens of active arguments/negotiations with dozens of countries at any given time. And we already established that this is a bilateral treaty and without any guarantors (unlike the Good Friday Agreement) and hence could be ripped up at a moments notice by either party if they so chose. Just look at the number of times France has made threats in relation to the Trade and [non-]Cooperation Agreement (TCA). The exit clauses are merely there to offer a graceful means of pre-agreed exit strategies.

The EU however *literally drafted emergency powers legal text* to trigger the Article 16 (exit clause) of the N.I. Protocol during a dispute - a petty, tawdry and without any basis in reality dispute at that - regarding Covid-19 vaccines.

It is remarkable how the tone of your posts reveals how "on edge" you are about this. Even laden with typos such is the haste with which you type. It (Brexit - an event which concluded over two years ago) is clearly still a very raw nerve for you.

[blibble]

> Last time I checked the UK was still the sole country in the world refusing an official ambassador status to the representative of the EU

you're not exactly up to date as this was sorted almost a year ago

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-57002735

[VBprogrammer]

You don't think it had anything to do with the whole of the EU being blamed for ever ill to befall the UK for the last 7 years? Or the negotiations in bad faith where international law was treated as "more like guidelines anyway"?

[jodrellblank]

> "We are "fair game" to them now."

As we should be. "We" spent years going "we've got the EU over a barrel, we'll make them bend to our whim, they need us more than we need them". Brexiteers now finding out that "leaving the EU" means we're no longer on their side and negotiating against 27 united countries sucks, well it would be funny if it wasn't hurting so many people.

[KarlKemp]

The EU does not think of the UK in that way.

In fact it tends not to think of the UK at all, these days.

As to being "fair game": that's true, in the sense that the EU will place the interests of member states over those of the UK. That dynamic must be among the least surprising developments of history, considering it is both obvious and formed the core of every serious prediction in the run-up to Brexit.

There was plenty of swagger back in those days with fantasies of renewed UK superpower domineering the EU and extracting every concession it can think of. "Fantasy" because that's just not how it works if the other party makes up 60 % of your foreign trade, but you make up less than 10 % of theirs.

So here we are now, with the UK coming up with these harebrained schemes that feel like some party organized with the specific purpose of not inviting your ex.

[toper-centage]

The UK playing victim is the reason Brexit happened in the first place. No wonder their residents continue being brainwashed in that sense.

[gizajob]

Maybe many of the residents of the UK see the creepy undemocratic bureaucracy of the EU for what it is, and it's single-speed forward into the future federal state of Europe wasn't something they wanted to be a part of. This isn't brainwashing, but people feeling more need for control and action on a local level, not their national parliaments being subsumed and subverted by Brussels, and the diverse peoples of the continent being treated as if they were all one thing.

[dmitriid]

> creepy undemocratic bureaucracy of the EU

> need for control and action on a local level

Ah you mean that local control and democracy when the party with 13% of the votes gets 0.2% seats in the parliament", right? [1]

[1] Great CGP Grey video on the 2015 General Election in the UK: https://youtu.be/r9rGX91rq5I

[gizajob]

I haven't got time for a deep-dive into statistics or methods of representation right now, which clearly need improving. The fact of the matter is that more people in the UK voted to leave the EU than even bothered to vote in the election of EU representatives in the election before. The EU failed to make a case for the importance of its democratic process, and rested content in its level of power existing despite this failure to reach people with its electoral process, and 51% of the electorate of the UK saw fit to remove themselves from the EU when given the opportunity to. My main suprise was caused by the UK doing this probably some 15-20 years before it really became a pressing question, but it was a case of "now or never" and swathes of people in the UK decided they didn't want to be involved (all seemingly for an individual set of personal reasons that are hard to form any consensus toward).

[KarlKemp]

yawn

[gizajob]

This doesn't seem like a harebrained scheme, but a challenging one of moving renewable energy from where it is abundant to where it is required. An example of a harebrained scheme would be Germany's reliance on Russian oil and gas.

[logifail]

> The last couple years has really let the mask slip on what the EU stands for and they've made it expressly clear how they intend to treat the UK going forward

I've just paid a €5 handling fee (just the handling fee, there was zero customs fee or any VAT levied) to receive an item sent by post from the UK to the EU, it was sent by post with a declared value of £3, and labelled as a gift.

Yes, I know all about declaring artificially low customs values - been there, done that - but in this case it was a single item of used childrens clothing, the best part of 40 years old(!) and of absolutely zero value other than to the recipient, it was being gifted from one generation to the next.

Somehow cheap electronics orders from China seem have always sailed through EU customs just fine :/

OTOH I can fly to Stansted for less than €10 all-in. Maybe next time it would be cheaper to fly to the UK and collect in person. Given the challenges of climate change, this option in particular appears to demonstrate how not-joined-up international policymaking currently is :(

[imtringued]

The EU ignores the UK to the extend that the UK wishes to be ignored by the EU.

[pydry]

The tories have been negotiating in bad faith on Brexit since day 1 and never really stopped. Stuff like the Internal Market Bill etc