A groundbreaking ceremony was held on Tuesday in the northern German town of Wilhelmsaven to mark the construction of a new undersea electricity cable set to connect Britain and Germany by 2028.
The 725-kilometre-long cable, called NeuConnect, will link the German transmission grid from Wilhelmshaven through the North Sea to the Isle of Grain peninsula in south-east England.
German Economy Minister Robert Habeck, who attended the ceremony along with British Trade Policy Minister Greg Hands, said the new cable would ensure flexibility in the distribution of renewable energies.
"The more interconnected Europe is, and the larger the network is, the more efficiently the system can be operated and controlled," Habeck said. This allows the main goal of decarbonization, or a climate-neutral electricity supply, to be achieved, he said.
The project is the first direct electricity connection between the two countries.
Surplus wind power, which is produced in the German North Sea but cannot yet be transported onshore due to bottlenecks in the electricity grid, will be exported to the UK - currently a net importer of electricity - via the submarine cable.
The NeuConnect project is backed by a consortium of investors, with costs amounting to almost €3 billion ($3.2 billion).
The line should be able to transport up to 1.4 gigawatts of electricity in both directions. The project company says that is enough energy for around 1.5 million households.