Paris, July 7, 2026 (Lusa) - Portugal is to assess the feasibility of an electricity link with Morocco, similar to the one Spain already has, the minister for the environment and energy, Maria da Graça Carvalho, has said.
“One of the issues on the table is the feasibility of an electricity link with Morocco, like the one Spain has,” the minister said, speaking to journalists in Paris following the ministerial meeting on Monday on the energy interconnection programme for South-West Europe, which focused on energy links between Portugal, Spain and France.
Maria da Graça Carvalho said she would be hosting Morocco’s Minister for Energy in Lisbon “within a few days”, a meeting at which the possibility of Portugal establishing an electricity link with that country will be examined.
“We need to carry out a cost-benefit analysis, but that is precisely what we want to do, to assess the advantages of also being connected to Morocco,” she said.
The possibility of an electricity link between Portugal and Morocco had already been raised in 2016, when the two countries launched a tender for a technical and financial feasibility study into a submarine cable interconnection.
At the time, during António Costa’s first Socialist government, the then minister of the economy, Manuel Caldeira Cabral, and Morocco’s Minister for Energy, Mines, Water and the Environment, Abdelkader Amara, signed a declaration of principles on electricity and natural gas at a ceremony in Lisbon, which was also attended by the then secretary of state for energy, Jorge Seguro Sanches.
When asked about the blackout of 28 April 2025 and the importance of electricity interconnections in restoring the system, Maria da Graça Carvalho stated that “an interconnection does not prevent a blackout”, but “helps a great deal” in “restoring power sooner”.
The minister pointed out that Portugal is connected only to Spain and, in this context, as the blackout originated in Spain, the country had to wait for the Spanish grid to recover before it could receive assistance via the interconnector.
She added that, if Spain had a stronger connection to France, “it would have taken less time to restore electricity” and could have helped Portugal “even sooner”.
The minister also noted that Portugal now has four power stations capable of autonomous restart, known as “black start”, having previously had only two.
“I hope not, but if there is another blackout, the power will be restored more quickly,” she said.
According to Maria da Graça Carvalho, Portugal restored power “in practically 11 to 12 hours” during last year’s blackout, which she considered “a good recovery” given the scale of the incident.
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