A $400bn (£240bn) plan to provide Europe with solar power from the Sahara desert moved a step closer to reality on the 30th of October 2009, with the formation of a consortium of 12 companies to carry out the work.
The Desertec Industrial Initiative (DII) aims to provide 15% of Europe’s electricity by 2050 or earlier via power lines stretching across the desert regions of the Middle East, North Africa (MENA), and the Mediterranean sea.
The Desert Concept Credit: The Guardian
The German-led consortium was brought together by Munich Re, the world’s biggest reinsurer, and consists of some of country’s biggest engineering and power companies, including Siemens, E.ON, ABB and Deutsche Bank.
The solar technology involved is known as concentrated solar power (CSP), is a commercially available technology that uses direct sunlight and mirrors to concentrate the sun’s rays to boil water and drive conventional steam turbines to generate electricity. The advantage over solar photovoltaic panels, which convert sunlight directly to electricity, is that if sufficient hot fluid is stored in containers, the generators can run all night. The technology is not new – there have been CSP plants already running in the California’s Mojave Desert and Nevada for about two decades.
The construction will begin in 2010, with 20 gigawatts of generating capacity and associated transmission infrastructure installed by 2020. DII believes it can deliver solar power to Europe as early as 2015, while in 2020 it will be able to deliver 55,000 gigawatt hours – enough to satisfy the power demand of 35 million people. The program will directly avert about 2.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions over the lifetime of the facilities, and will indirectly avert an additional 2.6 billion tons by accelerating cost reductions for investments outside the program.
“We have now passed a real milestone as the company has been founded and there is definitely a profitable business there,” said Professor Peter Höppe, Munich Re’s head of climate change.
“We see this as a big step towards solving the two main problems facing the world in the coming years – climate change and energy security,” he added.
Sources: The Desertec Foundation, The Guardian, Social Science Research Network
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