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Add TN as a preferred source on GoogleImed Derouiche | Energy, Hydrogen and Digital Transition Expert
ELMED was presented to us as a cable pointing north: Tunisia would generate electricity, especially from renewable sources, and export it to Italy. Six hundred megawatts of transfer capacity across the Mediterranean. An attractive promise. Yet while that future was being drawn up, Tunisia’s summer brought home a more immediate reality: before selling electricity abroad, a country must be able to supply the people who live and work within its borders.
The cable may therefore reverse direction. ELMED could prove more useful to Tunisia for importing electricity than for exporting it. During periods of high demand, it would provide another source of supply. This is a serious possibility: the interconnector was designed to carry power both ways. But it raises a question that is asked too rarely: how much Italian electricity will actually be available to Tunisia in 2031 or 2032, and at what price?
Tomorrow’s Italy will not be the Italy imagined in the project’s early presentations. Artificial intelligence needs data centres, and data centres need electricity around the clock. If these facilities expand across Italy, they could consume some of the power Tunisia hopes to buy at favourable times. Stronger Italian demand could also make those purchases more expensive.
That is the ELMED paradox: Tunisia could come to rely on imports that Italy’s new electricity needs make less available or less affordable.
It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that the cable will be useless. An interconnector is not a contract guaranteeing 600 MW at every hour. It is a capacity to trade. It can help a country meet peaks in demand and allow it to sell electricity at other times. Its value will depend on how it is actually used: for how many hours will Tunisia import? For how many will it export? At what prices? And with what effect on the security of supply for Tunisian households and businesses?
The growing number of grid connection requests from data centres in Italy gives us good reason to ask these questions. Such requests do not mean every project will be built. They do mean that a lasting supply of cheap surplus electricity from Italy cannot be taken for granted.
Tunisia must therefore prepare ELMED for several possible futures. It needs to strengthen its generation capacity and grid, develop renewables that meet domestic needs first, and assess potential exchanges with Italy hour by hour and season by season. Above all, it should not replace one oversimplified promise — “we will export 600 MW” — with another: “Italy will supply whatever we lack.”
The alpha of ELMED was exports to the north. Its omega may be Tunisia’s electricity security. Between the two, AI has changed the equation. Before we lose our bearings, we must ask the question that matters: will this cable serve a Tunisian energy strategy, or are we hoping it will stand in for one?
Sources and context
ELMED, official project overview: https://elmedproject.com/
World Bank, “Tunisia’s energy sector can become an engine for green growth,” 28 November 2023: https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/arabvoices/tunisias-energy-sector-can-become-engine-for-green-growth
Terna, 2025 Grid Development Plan, data centre connection requests: https://www.terna.it/en/electric-system/efficient-territorial-planning/national-electricity-transmission-grid-development-plan
IEA, Energy and AI, global data centre demand projections: https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-ai/energy-demand-from-ai
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