I’d love to see some hard numbers on the “sun cable”. At a high level it seems like the biggest pie in the sky bullshit.
What has killed these projects (although Xlinks are seemingly still releasing press releases on a regular basis) is the radical shift in the relative prices of the components. Laying HDVC cables under the sea was and remains expensive while the price of solar PV panels has dropped by nearly 90% in a decade.
As a result, the economics don't really add up any more. The capacity factor for a typical solar PV panel in northern Africa is about double that of one sited in northern Europe. But this increased efficiency cannot be exploited. It's now significantly cheaper to simply install twice as many PV panels in the north of Germany than install half the number of panels in the Sahara AND build 1000km of transmission to get the electricity to the markets in northern Europe.
There are other disadvantages also; the energy security is much worse - having transmission lines passing through a bunch of other countries - some of which are politically unstable. Also sub-sea interconnectors take years to provision - you might be looking at a decade long project while siting the panels locally means a year or couple of years project at most.
But as you say, it seems much better to build much more solar power capacity locally. If the local utility makes ammonia (or some other form of storage) to store for the winter, that seems to make more economic sense.
You end up importing power over 2000km from the cheapest solar resource in the world (~20% power loss panel-to-home), or maybe import green ammonia to burn in generators (same panels, installed in Australia, ~70% efficiency loss).
Of course both alternatives are more expensive than cheap coal. And if you are are a grumpy old man, go ahead and vote to delay and defer and deceive.