The project will create the first high-voltage direct-current interconnection between Europe and North Africa, becoming operational in 2031.
The Elmed project represents a strategic shift in Mediterranean energy infrastructure, designed to allow Italy to import electricity from renewable projects planned in Tunisia. By linking the two regions, the 600-megawatt connection aims to strengthen the ability of both countries to manage periods of peak electricity demand.
The Technical Architecture of the Elmed Link
To move power across the 220-kilometre distance, Hitachi Energy will deploy converter stations that transform alternating current—the standard for homes and businesses—into direct current. This conversion is essential for lowering power losses during long-distance transport before converting the electricity back into alternating current for local grids.
Niklas Persson, CEO of Hitachi Energy Grid Integration Business Unit, said that high-voltage direct-current technology is a great enabler to integrate renewables, as well as to transport power over long distances without losses.
Construction of these stations is expected to begin in roughly one year, utilizing equipment sourced within Europe. The project has been designated as a strategic project by the European Commission.
AI and the Surge in Global Power Demand
The push for new interconnections arrives as the rise of AI and hyperscaler data centers—massive distributed networks of computing resources—drives an urgent need for electrical growth across Europe, China, and the U.S. Hyperscalers are large companies that invest in building or expanding data centers in a distributed network worldwide to act as large-scale cloud service providers. Companies such as Amazon AWS, which holds 30% of the global cloud infrastructure market, Microsoft Azure, and Alphabet’s Google Cloud Platform are expanding rapidly to meet AI infrastructure needs.
The scale of this demand is significant. According to a report by Reuters, almost 60% of senior energy executives name AI and data centers as one of the most significant power challenges over the next 5-10 years. Nearly 80% of senior energy executives believe data centers will require more than 11% of total electricity consumption by 2030, with 38% expecting that figure to exceed 16%.
Divergent Energy Strategies: North America vs. Europe
While the need for power is global, the methods to supply it vary by region. North American executives view the data center revolution as bigger, faster, and closer
than their European counterparts, and they lean more heavily on traditional fuels. A Reuters report found that 54% of North American executives favor natural gas for powering data centers, compared to only 34% in Europe.
European executives show a stronger preference for renewables and storage. Similarly, 47% of Europeans favor energy storage over the 34% in North America.
| Power Source | Europe Exec Preference | North America Exec Preference |
|---|---|---|
| Solar PV | 59% | 43% |
| Natural Gas | 34% | 54% |
| Energy Storage | 47% | 34% |
Capital Shifts and the Solar-Battery Hybrid
Investment patterns reflect this urgency. Rystad Energy data shows that between 2020 and 2025, data center spending grew by 600%, surpassing upstream oil and gas investments and matching investment in total renewables. Only solar PV has shown similar exponential growth since 2015, though that growth flattened in the last two years. Rystad Energy notes that new data centers are based on about 100 megawatts (MW) of power supply.
Big tech hyperscalers, including Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta, are expected to dominate investments, alongside AI labs such as OpenAI. The dominant technical solution for these facilities appears to be a hybrid of solar and battery energy storage systems (BESS). This combination, which 92% of executives identify as a leading choice, addresses the intermittency of solar power to ensure 24/7 operation. In contrast, newer technologies like small nuclear reactors (SMRs) and geothermal power rank lowest—at 18% and 11% respectively—due to high costs and implementation delays.
Mediterranean Resilience and Future Links
The Elmed project is part of a broader effort to secure energy resilience across the Mediterranean. This trend is mirrored in other regions; for example, Portugal’s energy minister recently stated that Lisbon is exploring a power interconnection with Morocco to ensure an additional electricity source during supply disruptions.
As Europe integrates more renewables to meet the demands of the AI era, the success of the Elmed link by 2031 will serve as a test case for cross-continental high-voltage direct-current transmission. The primary uncertainty remains whether these massive infrastructure projects can be deployed fast enough to keep pace with the exponential growth of hyperscale data centers.
