The debate over the electricity generation model on the Atlantic periphery has taken on a new geopolitical and technical dimension. While the Moroccan government is holding talks with Turkish-based multinational Karpowership to deploy liquefied natural gas (LNG)-powered energy barges off its coast, in the Canary Islands the mere possibility of importing this model has triggered strong political and institutional opposition.
Turkish giant Karpowership — a subsidiary of Karadeniz Holding — has established itself in recent years as a global player in floating power generation. With a fleet of more than 30 power ships boasting a combined capacity of over 6,000 megawatts, the company operates in port facilities in more than ten countries across Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. Following contacts held at the African Energy Forum in Cape Town, the company has proposed deploying its Karadeniz Powership vessels in Morocco to alleviate the structural electricity shortage and frequent power outages affecting rural areas of the kingdom.
However, the international track record of these combustion platforms is weighed down by a long history of controversy, ranging from environmental pollution incidents to legal disputes. The company’s record includes serious allegations over a fuel spill in the waters of the Dominican Republic, as well as the well-known regulatory and social fiasco in South Africa, where the Turkish firm’s projects were halted following strong opposition from environmental groups and small-scale fishing communities.
Firm opposition in Gran Canaria to the fossil-fuel ‘megaship’
Despite this background, the proposal to turn to floating thermal power plants has spilled directly into the islands’ energy debate. Red Eléctrica de España (REE) has proposed urgently increasing generation capacity by 130 megawatts (MW) in Gran Canaria and 80 MW in Tenerife in order to cover demand peaks and ensure supply in the event of possible technical unavailability.
The proposal has met with a categorical response from Nueva Canarias-Bloque Canarista (NC-BC). Its secretary-general in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and the city council’s first deputy mayor, Pedro Quevedo, has formally called on REE and the regional government to rule out the permanent berthing of a power-generating ship at the Port of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
The Canarian party argues that installing a fossil-fuel-powered ‘megaship’ would pose serious health risks to the coastal population of the capital of Gran Canaria, as well as directly slowing the penetration of renewable energy into the island’s grid. Quevedo has questioned the actual need to add 130 MW of continuous firm capacity through thermal generation, noting that within 18 months, large-scale storage systems using grid-forming batteries are expected to come online — an immediate-response technology that is significantly more effective in dealing with power outages than any floating power plant.
The NC-BC leader also argued that the recent blackouts recorded in the archipelago — such as the one experienced on the island of La Graciosa — were not caused by insufficient generation capacity, but by infrastructure failures in distribution networks or anomalies in response protocols. The party is demanding that the islands’ energy planning prioritize reinforcing the 220-kilovolt lines and installing synchronous condensers, avoiding temporary solutions with a high environmental impact such as those Karpowership is seeking to establish along the West African coast.
The article “Karpowership’s shadow spreads from Morocco to the Port of Las Palmas after setbacks in Africa and the Caribbean” was first published on canarymaritime.com.
