If the company TuNur gets the go-ahead, up to 2.5 million UK homes could be powered by Tunisian sunshine by 2018. TuNur, which is a partnership between British renewables investor Low Carbon, developer Nur Energie and Tunisian investors, says it has already spent 10 million euros developing the site in southern Tunisia.

Moreover, the company has gathered three years of solar data from the location, which it says has been independently verified.

Legislation has also been passed in the Tunisian parliament to facilitate the export of the energy, and an agreement has been reached with the Italian network operator to connect a dedicated under-sea cable to a sub-station near Rome for transmission across Europe.

Kevin Sara, chief executive of TuNur, said: “This is not a back-of-the-envelope fantasy. We are working with some of the largest engineering firms in the world.”

The company’s plans involve using concentrated solar power (CSP) technology. This allows some of the energy generated to be stored, so that the supply is ‘dispatchable’ and can be switched on or off on demand. Moreover, it says its electricity supplies will be secure and 20% cheaper than home-grown sources, such as offshore wind.

It is reported that the Government, while set to open the bidding process for energy projects outside the EU, is not rushing to embrace the Tunisian idea. It also made it clear that if the Tunisian project went ahead, the energy would have to be exclusively for use in the UK.