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A €400 billion plan to provide Europe with solar energy from the Sahara is gaining momentum, whereas some critics worry about starting a large corporate project using new technologies in the region.
The initiative called “Desertec” is the world’s largest project for solar energy. Mirrors’ fields in the desert would gather solar rays in order to boil water and operate turbines to electrify a new carbon-free network linking Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.
The project would keep Europe at the forefront of the fight against climate change and boost North African and European countries’ growth within greenhouse gas emission limits, said the project supporters which are finance and industrial firms mainly from Germany.
According to the project founders, energy provided by deserts around the world during 6 hours exceeds the world’s energy consumption over a whole year.
“The Sahara offers every advantage you want: proximity to Europe, virtually no population and more intense sunlight,” said George Joffe, a researcher and Maghreb expert at Cambridge University. “It would be mad to pass up this opportunity,” he added.
Opponents highlight Desertec’s disadvantages mainly Maghreb’s political situation, sand storms in the Sahara in addition to the danger that may threaten Sahara population if their water was used for cleaning the solar mirrors from dust.
Desertec’s concentrated solar power technology involves bigger costs and risks than the fast-growing patchwork of smaller-scale photovoltaic cell installations which generate most of Europe’s solar energy today, opponents added.
The Club of Rome, an international group of experts which suggests solutions to global problems, proposed Desertec project which became an industrial project last month when the reinsurance Munich Re company launched it from its headquarters in the Bavarian capital.
“We have a special relationship with climate change,” pointed out Peter Hoeppe, the head of Munich Re’s Geo Risk Research department. “It affects our core business, the insurance of weather-related natural catastrophes, which count among the most expensive losses we have to bear,” he uttered.
Desertec’s proponents say it would also be a positive step from the developed world forwards the Middle East and North Africa countries which suffer mostly from frequent drought waves and desertification.
Sahara could one day provide 15% of Europe’s electricity, but company officials expect the plan to progress in small stages and estimate that it will not be completed before 2050.
Desertec would need 20 or more efficient direct cables costing up to $1 billion each in order to transmit electricity to the North under the Mediterranean Sea.
Southern Mediterranean’s countries which import most of its energy power such as Morocco, Tunisia and Jordan will also benefit from Desertec.
Morocco says it has already labeled sites to install the solar mirrors, not deep in the Sahara but in populated areas in north of the desert in order to provide water to clean mirrors and cool turbines.
Desertec would provide enough energy to Morocco discharging it from importing energy up to 95% while supplying a large amount of energy to Europe, Moroccan Government reports.
Desertec success relies on the governments’ coordination. However, Maghreb countries tried over 20 years to unify their economies and enhance their political ties but in vain. Besides, borders between Morocco and Tunisia are closed and relations are tensed because of the dispute over Western Sahara.
Algeria has the biggest chunk of desert that is why a private Algerian company, Cevital, has signed up for Desertec. However, Algeria is isolated and struggling to reform its economy based on a Soviet style after the violent civil conflict in the 1990s.
Algerian government has established conditions on internal investment and says it will not cooperate with Desertec unless it allows partnerships between Algerian and foreign firms and a transfer of technology.
Analysts underplay the risks of infrastructure posed by rebellious organization aligned with Al Qaeda in Algeria, pointing out that the investment risks pose a far bigger problem.
“There is the risk of expropriation of assets, reneging on license agreements, corruption and bureaucratic which could stop things getting off the ground,” Henry Wilkinson of Janusian Security Risk Management stressed out.
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