A closer look at a flagship Tunisia-Italy electricity interconnection project shows that, in reality, it is reinforcing Tunisia's debt and dependency while helping Italy polish its green credentials.
In other words, it is a classic case of greenwashing.
Tunisia is facing an escalating energy crisis. Once nearly self-sufficient, the country now produces less than half of what it consumes. Over 95 percent of Tunisia's electricity comes from natural gas, two-thirds of which is imported from Algeria. Even electricity itself is increasingly imported.
In 2023, 11 percent of Tunisia's electricity demand was met by imports, underscoring the country's growing structural dependency and draining its public finances.Instead of rethinking this broken model, the Tunisian government has doubled down on it: borrowing from international financial institutions, privatising the energy sector and aligning with the European Union's decarbonisation agenda.
At the centre of this approach is the Tunisia-Italy Elmed interconnection project - a 200-kilometre undersea electricity cable promoted as a milestone of Mediterranean cooperation.
Behind the rhetoric of partnership lies a familiar pattern of green colonialism: Europe's decarbonisation achieved at the expense of Southern sovereignty.
The project is largely financed through European and World Bank loans and is implemented jointly by Tunisia's public utility, Steg, and Italy's grid operator, Terna.
In late September 2025, Steg and Terna awarded a 460 million euro ($532m) contract to the Italian manufacturer Prysmian for the construction of the 600 MW submarine cable, part of a project with a total cost estimated at 1.16 billion euros.
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