When we hear about news of renewable energy projects, one must be forgiven for thinking that it’s all beautiful and shiny. But scratching a little bit beneath the surface of this language of "cleanliness," "shininess" and "carbon emission cuts" will reveal another picture, a picture of big capital robbing land and resource rights from the global south in order to safeguard the energy security of the global north.
TuNur solar project in Tunisia is a joint venture between Nur Energy, a British-based solar developer and a group of Maltese and Tunisian investors in the oil and gas sector. In July, the company has filed a request for authorisation from the Tunisian Ministry of Energy, Mines and Renewable Energy for an explicitly export-oriented solar project with a capacity of 4.5 GW.
Like Desertec and the Ouarzazate solar plant in Morocco, this new project is a renewable energy grab or what has been termed ‘Green Grabbing’: the appropriation of land and resources for purportedly environmental ends. It involves massive land grabs (10,000 hectares) as well as extensive water usage to clean and cool the panels in arid and semi-arid regions to export energy to the UK and Europe. Given that Tunisia depends on its neighbour Algeria for its energy needs and faces increasingly frequent power cuts, it would be outrageous and unjust to prioritise exports over the urgent needs of local people.
