£360 billion investment ... is just a fraction of the £22.5 billion that

?

Rgds

Damon

It's still an ecosystem, even if it looks bare. It's also very vulnerable, so don't think it's just empty land.

You're right rob, it isn't empty. But if you want the world to use renewable energy, then the wind and solar farms have to go somewhere, and they are gonna take up a lot of land. Rooftops are a great choice because they mostly go unused otherwise. Deserts are your next best choice, because they are as close to empty as you're going to find. No solution is perfect. The trick is to figure out the best alternatives.

This has always seemed like a great opportunity. No reason to have to start with all of Europe. Take it one step at a time. I've always thought that Africa has a ton of potential with solar and wind energy. It could really open up some great revenue and technology streams if the governments can manage it properly.

It seems impossible (according to my vague understanding of the desert) since the desert is constantly shifting. The idea seems like a bottomless money pit and a disaster for the sensitive animals that live there. I'm pretty gloom and doom today though so if it comes up again, with more concrete details, I may be convinced that it could work.

I agree with Anthony, it's the next best choice after rooftops.

Deserts far away?

I've got a whole roof on the top of my house that is just waiting for some government support to get some solar boost!

I'll even pay for most of it and install it!

It'll be cheaper to pay for, maintain, will create local jobs and it's a support structure that's already built over a distribution infrastructure that already exists!

What are you waiting for??

"an efficient enough transmission infrastructure"

Therein lies the rub, see? In order to get electricity all that way, you'd need to have superconducting power lines, which are prohibitively expensive and need to be cooled to insanely low temperatures.

@ FreakyMysty,
You're thinking about sand dunes. Firstly, not all of the Sahara is comprised of dunes. There are many places where the desert floor is hard and flat. Secondly, there are ways to mitigate dune movement, through the use of sand fences and planting vegetation. The Saudis often have issue while drilling for oil in the empty quarter, and have been able to handle it without too much trouble.

@ Ernie,
You don't need superconductors to transmit electricity efficiently over distance. Using high voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission you lose about 3% of your power every 700 miles. It's only about 700 miles from the Sahara to most of southern Europe and twice that covers everything south of Scandinavia. This is an acceptable loss since it require the addition of an additional power plant (or two) for every thirty built to cover transmission costs. This is easily covered in the greater efficiencies of generating solar in the Sahara vs. cloudy Europe. The undersea transmission lines do make a juicy terrorist target, however...

What an EXCELLENT idea. This has the HUGE benefit of diverting funding from wealthy Europe to Africa. If this scheme is managed properly (and it is essential that it is...) The funds generated could hugely alleviate infrastructure and food problems in Africa.
Use of the desert floor for this purpose is frankly a small price to pay for eco-friendly power generation for Europe and a huge financial source for Africa.

If it were not for the sand dunes...technically this is a huge problem - all the sand...

JSDreyer, do you seriously think more than a handful of Africans will see the economic benefit of this project? With Europe's track record in Africa, I seriously doubt it. Slaves, gold, diamonds, oil....and now sunlight. Let's start taking bets to see what else Europeans can take from Africa and mislabel it as "development."

@ dN|Be:
I was not arguing in favor of the project. I was simply pointing out that roadblocks perceived by the commenters were non starters. I think you were trying to argue against ecobore's comment, not mine. The commenter's name appears below the comment, which is the opposite case from most other blogs.

If it is installed, I imagine that it would create a situation similar to what exists in the middle east with oil already, i.e. a rich oligarchy that controls the wealth. However, CSP and PV plants have a high degree of manual labor associated to, so perhaps that is what ecobore was referring to.

The Europe I live in is pretty sunny below the Pyrenees.
It's not Sahara the but annual average of sunlight is enormous- ask all the German tourists!

How about "Solar Energy in the Sahara to Power:" Africa?

Europe can help of course but for its own power it should also focus its resources to offshore wind and solar power effecient enough to be installed within its own boundaries?

@Leo

Wind energy isn't like oil, there's no huge wind fields to be discovered, europe is essentially farmed out. Yes, you can improve wind to electric efficiencies, as can you with solar, but not by leaps and bounds.. you won't see a solar to electric efficiency anytime soon that skyrockets... by 2020, maybe it will be %16. Maybe. Right now its about %14. And with that kind of efficiency, you can't get enough power out of Europe, the insolation levels are too low, thats what is so attractive about Africa.

But i do agree, there does have to be a call for respectable business practice, and power sharing. A side benefit of this could be desalination plants. Concentrated solar is much more efficient (6 percent production increase) when water cooling is used as compared to air.. so you put the plants near water sources, and use some of that power to run a desalination plant, combining the two plants into 1.

@Rob, way above..

I don't understand this type of mentality. Would you rather Europe didn't build here, and instead kept putting up new coal or NG plants, pumping out CO2? Yes, there's going to be an impact of any decision, but look at the long range goals and effects that will hopefully be avoided by a plan like this; so a VERY small fraction of the desert is impacted, thereby cutting Europe's emissions to required levels and below, are you saying you'd rather we keep the desert, and possibly melt more arctic ice, raise sea levels, which could in turn increase malaria rates, especially in sub-Saharan Africa? Just one tiny example.

You will never find a situation in which an action does not affect someone, or something, but the benefits of this plan make it glaringly obvious that its worth the costs.

a win/win situation all round. Europe gets green clean energy and Africa gets lots of money for providing it.