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See the original image at guardian.co.uk

Saharan sun's solar power could provide Europe's electricity

guardian.co.uk — Speaking at the Euroscience Open Forum in Barcelona, Arnulf Jaeger-Walden of the European commission's Institute for Energy, said it would require the capture of just 0.3% of the light falling on the Sahara and Middle East deserts to meet all of Europe's energy needs.

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  • Kalior, on 07/23/2008, -5/+26It's really sad that political and regional tensions will keep this from ever happening
    • TJ11240, on 07/23/2008, -1/+12I agree. Its truly a shame that these poorer nations are missing out on such an abundant source of energy. Imagine how much the standard of living would increase if they started exporting clean electricity.
      • morg666, on 07/23/2008, -0/+3The Middle East is already exporting energy in the form of oil. It hasn't helped the general populace's standard of living. Unfortunately, I don't imagine clean energy will either.
    • geekmansworld, on 07/23/2008, -1/+6Actually, if we see some traction on this "Mediterranean Union" that's being batted around lately, solar power export might not be so unrealistic.
    • pixzor, on 07/23/2008, -3/+1If the African countries are politically to unstable, for this idea to go ahead, then why not use floating rafts in the middle of the Atlantic, where they can be position right on the equator? We already have massive underwater cables stretching across the Atlantic, and are already deploying offshore wind farms, so I don’t see why offshore solar should have a problem.
      • davdev, on 07/23/2008, -0/+3Underwater cables avoid a major obstacle that floating platforms would not be able to... Storms!

        A big ass hurricane forming off Africa could wipe out those floating islands pretty quickly
    • waydee, on 07/23/2008, -0/+4The EU has a good relationship with Morocco, theres no reason why politics should stop this happening nor is Morocco in the midsts of "regional tensions" as you put it - this is North Africa we're talking about, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia...


      • DesignNerd, on 07/23/2008, -1/+1You realize that Morocco and Algeria have had closed borders with each other since 1994, right? That does not exactly say "neighborly hug".
  • SQLserver, on 07/23/2008, -4/+8I never could figure out why some rich guy like Bill Gates, or the head of an energy company didn't just buy a huge lot of land in the Sahara dirt cheap, and make a huge solar plant.
    • TxAggie08, on 07/23/2008, -0/+14Because there are an infinite number of really good things a person like Gates could do to help the world; he has chosen poverty as his battle.
    • tnoy, on 07/23/2008, -0/+12Bill Gates is too busy with more important things, like trying to cure 3rd-world nations from things like malaria.
    • jmpeagle, on 07/23/2008, -4/+2because it wouldn't make any money...solar power is still fairly expensive compared to other renewables. If companies could make easy money from it. Nevada, N. Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, etc... would be covered in solar power plants. They need huge subsidies right now to get by but costs are falling so maybe this will happen in the future without subsidies.
    • Leeesa, on 07/28/2008, -0/+0Yeah well that's what T. Boone Pickens is doing in Texas. Believe me, this guy is NOT going to lose money. He doesn't know how!
  • geekmansworld, on 07/23/2008, -1/+24To: North Africa

    1. Build solar power stations
    2. Kick old grudges to the curb
    3. ??????
    4. Profit!
    • Daxx22, on 07/23/2008, -1/+3"2. Kick old grudges to the curb"

      Yeah, thats the impossible part. Those regions have been in conflict for so long there is no other way for them.
      • chr00t, on 07/23/2008, -1/+6The same was said of Ireland and the IRA
      • davdev, on 07/23/2008, -1/+3Europe had some pretty old grudges right up until WWII and they came together.
      • DesignNerd, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1Yeah! All Africa needs is a devestating complete anhilation of economy,infrastructure, and population! Then George C. Marshall will come on in and give them tons of money to help them rebuild!

        pfft.
  • polychrome, on 07/23/2008, -2/+4There have long been power alternatives. Finally things are beginning to move in this field. I just hope they will move quickly enough.
  • brettg102, on 07/23/2008, -7/+7Was just on front page...3ish hours ago. You LOSE!
  • s0ldad0, on 07/23/2008, -7/+2Bush will declare them a rogue nation and axis of evil member in 3...2...1...
  • Warom, on 07/23/2008, -4/+18If 0.3% could power europe wouldn't that mean about 0.05% would be required to power africa. Imagine if all of Africa could have electricity. They could have electric water pumps which would lead to better irrigation and more crops. More advanced hospitals could be set up. In my opinion supplying Africa with electricity would be far better than for Europe as it would be easier, cheaper and have a greater impact on peoples lives.
    • 1randomguyO8, on 07/23/2008, -1/+10negative. You still have to build the infrastructure to every single town, city and house. Africa can't afford it.
      • PabloMac, on 07/23/2008, -0/+5They could if they sell energy, and corrupt governments and warlords don't...

        Well, never mind.
    • Jibberwalk, on 07/23/2008, -0/+10The problem arises when you have to build the infrastructure to deliver the solar energy to the rest of Africa. It's expensive, and is one of the primary reasons even wealthy states like the US hasn't been able to build wind farms in the plains. The amount of resources required to cover such vast amounts of land with the necessary equipment is daunting.

      Not only is the cost prohibitive, relying on funds the non-unified African countries don't have... but the constant filling and shifting of power in the African nations makes it difficult to ensure the necessary upkeep of the infrastructure facilities/lines.
  • cph1, on 07/23/2008, -4/+30"...it could produce 100 GW, more than the combined electricity output from all sources in the UK, with an investment of around €450bn"

    so for less than the cost of the iraq war we could have converted all of Europe to solar power...

    what a sad world we live in
    • brettg102, on 07/23/2008, -2/+18"More than all the sources in the UK"...UK does NOT equal EU.
      • Uiaccsk, on 07/23/2008, -1/+5thats hardly the point.
      • cph1, on 07/23/2008, -0/+6I know, misread the initials.
        Either way the idea is the same.
  • Rodalli, on 07/23/2008, -3/+16I can't wait for this!

    Imagine it: you're out in the Sahara in your sandpeople fatigues working on repairing this coupling for one of the solar panels. The wind is blowing, one of your coworkers is busily trying to clear a encroaching dune away from nearby panel, when suddenly...SANDWORM!

    Oh my god, brain aneurysm!
  • Aliwalla, on 07/23/2008, -3/+4Wow. I really can't believe it took them this long to figure out. Europe could be powered by this, wind power and wave power alone... if it wasn't for the Nuclear Lobby.
    • qetuo, on 07/23/2008, -2/+1Yes, we could be powered by wind, we live on a island.
    • jmpeagle, on 07/23/2008, -1/+4you mean all Europe has to do is reconfigure their entire electrical grid and switch to DC transmission to get solar energy across the mediterranean...why it is so SIMPLE
      • subliminalurge, on 07/23/2008, -1/+2And why exactly would they have to convert to DC transmission?

        I'm not an electrical engineer, but even I know that transmitting power over long distances as DC is just plain ***** stupid.
      • jmpeagle, on 07/24/2008, -0/+1you can't transmit electricity through water via AC, it has to be DC
  • brettg102, on 07/23/2008, -1/+6Has noone thought of the constantly blowing erosive sands affecting everything out there? Or the constantly shifting dunes that make building a permanent installation nearly impossible?
    • BossKey, on 07/23/2008, -0/+5On top of that, based on some articles I've been reading, I wonder if a massive solar installation out in the middle of nowhere would look like a gold mine to those roving bands of metal thieves.
    • Chaoticx, on 07/23/2008, -1/+1There's probably a solution. Could build high walls around the plant? Might stop some of the sand. I don't know, but I'm sure if we figure out how to harness the sun's energy we can figure out how to keep sand and wind from getting to our panels.
  • Stormwern, on 07/23/2008, -1/+7Should point out that 0.3% of an area as big as europe itself is still pretty darn big. Still, great that there's virtually unlimited energy to be had if we really go for it.
  • Teknikscian, on 07/23/2008, -5/+0Looks like a great place for a terrorists attack to me. Too bad the world is a ***** hole, cause there is someone out there that would love to destroy it...just cause.

    really hope it goes through though, would be good for more than just europe as others have explained.
    • Uiaccsk, on 07/23/2008, -0/+4STOP FEAR MONGERING!

      have some friggin hope in people.
    • PabloMac, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1I almost dugg your comment up, and then I started reading your second sentence and changed my mind.
  • architerp, on 07/23/2008, -3/+3Why don't they make a floating solar power plant in the ocean and connect it to the mainland? Ocean is free.
  • nuno86, on 07/23/2008, -8/+2Why do we always need to depend on middle east energy?
    Today it's oil. In the future it will be solar power.

    I hope European countries build their own solar farms.
    ***** you Middle East!
    • localzuk, on 07/23/2008, -1/+7Geography isn't your strongest subject is it?
      • nuno86, on 07/23/2008, -0/+2lol... actually it is. after this i just remembered sahara is in Africa. but then this comment couldnt be edited or deleted, so yeah, i deserve to be buried.
  • 9bpm9, on 07/23/2008, -6/+2So basically they use African land, all the energy goes to Europe, and the Africans get no energy from it?
    • localzuk, on 07/23/2008, -0/+4They get paid for it... That sort of installation would create thousands of jobs (probably 10's of thousands), easily.
    • nullcodes, on 07/23/2008, -0/+2umm it isnt exploitation cause they would be getting nothing if it wasnt there, whereas now they will be getting paid for leasing out the land so they may even be able to build another one of these for themselves not to mention get somemoney towards building critical infrastructure like hospitals, roads etc.
  • jrattner1, on 07/23/2008, -5/+1The downfall: As soon as the system is implemented, it will become the worlds primary terrorist target. Sounds like a case of putting too many eggs in one basket....
    • Uiaccsk, on 07/23/2008, -0/+3we should just stop building anything that might help people, because other people might blow it up. What kind of way is that to live?
    • BossKey, on 07/23/2008, -0/+2The problem with your theory is that it will be the worlds LARGEST terrorist target. It would be much harder to take out acres and acres of panels than it would be to take down a single airplane or a couple of buildings on a single block.

      Much easier to blow up an oil refinery.
  • Petrarch1603, on 07/23/2008, -2/+10like its that easy to capture .3% of the sunlight on the sahara. Hell let's just build a dyson spere around the sun while we're living in fantasyland
  • Tssst, on 07/23/2008, -4/+2Sigh.. and there I was thinking that once the oil-dependencies are gone, the west will finally leave the mideast and there will be peace. But alas there is more exploitation to be had from the neo-colonies.
    • localzuk, on 07/23/2008, -0/+4Please look at an atlas... The middle east only contains a small amount of the Sahara... It is 3.5million square miles in size, stretching from the Atlantic ocean on the west coast of northern africa to the red sea in the east.
  • Foxcow, on 07/23/2008, -4/+3Africa's resources should be used to power and improve Africa! Africa is the most resource rich continent in the world but also the poorest due colonialism, neo-colonialism, politics, etc.
    • waydee, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1Who's to say the country where this is situated won't be able to draw power from it?

      We're also talking about Northern African countries here, not the ***** Congo - travel some time and you'll see that Morocco, North Algeria and Tunisia are the locations where this would be situated, they've got adequate infrastructure already and I'm sure would welcome the foreign investment, jobs and energy this would provide.

  • Andrwmorph, on 07/23/2008, -3/+3Where will the Jawas live?
  • jshare, on 07/23/2008, -4/+4Is this a new, clean form of colonialism?
  • rrife, on 07/23/2008, -5/+1Hmm, Sahara is 3.5 million sq miles, so if you need .3% then you'd need at least 10k sq miles of solar panels.....but the best solar panels are only 28% efficient, so you'll need 4x as many to make up the difference.....so they only need 40k sq miles of ground covered by solar panels to power Europe. That's good for the environment.
    • wunksta, on 07/23/2008, -0/+0solar technology is actually making leaps and bounds in the efficiency of its use.
    • ChayD, on 07/23/2008, -0/+2...plus this is a CSP site, so they're probably using a heliostat array to focus all the light onto some sort of steam generator to run turbines, I would guess.
    • bmdt2000, on 07/23/2008, -0/+5Although 10k sq miles is extremely large, I'm sure that they took the efficiency into account when coming up with this number, so there is no need to multiple the 10k by 4.
  • Uiaccsk, on 07/23/2008, -3/+1The food, water, and energy crises, while they may spark new feuds, may put old ones to bed.
  • nullcodes, on 07/23/2008, -2/+1umm it isnt exploitation cause they would be getting nothing if it wasnt there, whereas now they will be getting paid for leasing out the land so they may even be able to build another one of these for themselves not to mention get the money to build critical infrastructure like hospitals, roads etc.
  • Cheeseburgers, on 07/23/2008, -3/+2we need to start paying for carbon credits RIGHT NOW! Al Gore is the only one how can save us now!
  • trollick, on 07/23/2008, -6/+3Sahara is NOT in Europe.
  • Badandy127, on 07/23/2008, -5/+2Anyone want to make an estimate on how much it would cost to power all of Europe from solar arrays in the Saharan desert?


    Over/Under by replying to this thread

    $1 Trillion USD
    • waydee, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1This is about establishing a grid within Europe that draws power from a number of renewable sources - from Geothermal, Wind and Solar across the continent, EU member states and this project proposed for Northern Africa.
  • COINTELPRO, on 07/23/2008, -3/+0Cointelpro Energy Plan

    What about using biofuels such as ethanol and cellosic to produce electricity also. We use natural gas to produce electricity with lower energy density.

    In addition, a turbine at a power plant can produce electricity much more efficiently than putting it in a car. You can even use oil to produce electricity more efficiently and sending that power to an electric car. You can use biofuels to decrease our use of coal and power our cars.

    You wouldn't need that much biofuels if you develop efficient processes to convert it into energy. A combination of biofuels and renewable energy utilized in an electric infrastructure should be the energy goal of the United States.

  • heymeester, on 07/23/2008, -2/+1The only problem with this model is that you shift from a dependence on foreign oil to foreign electricity. Eventually the region with the resource realizes they are being exploited, they nationalize the industry, and form a cartel. We'll realize they need liberating, so we'll invade the region and set up permanent bases, and the cycle repeats...

    We need regional, efficient power. I'm still waiting for my Mr. Fusion.
  • Hokke, on 07/23/2008, -2/+2Or you could build those power plants that concentrate the suns rays in one spot. They are much more efficient, and are almost as powerful as nuclear reactors, but ten times cheaper.
    • GeorgeStone2, on 07/23/2008, -1/+1Do they even exist?
      • brettg102, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1Yes. Mirrors concentrate the sun on a tower that contains salt...salt holds heat very well...salt becomes molten...you make steam with it.
  • dpotter2, on 07/23/2008, -2/+1I hope somebody has thought about how to transmit all that electricty to Europe. Superconducting lines would be necessary to keep line loss to a minimum. You wouldn't want to run lines around the Med., so Gibraltar would be a great place to tax the transmission lines.
    • waydee, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1Their plan is to use DC transmission, less than 1% loss over 1000km with modern equipment as the last article (which made the front page) posted today explained.

  • Sevfan, on 07/23/2008, -2/+3Um wtf - dc loses power over distance not ac - they have it backwards.
  • zuperxtreme, on 07/23/2008, -2/+1Around 225 thousand acres are needed at around 8% efficiency to provide the world energy. But, of course, it will never happen.

    http://www.ez2c.de/ml/solar_land_area/
  • khulbert, on 07/23/2008, -1/+6"Energy losses on DC lines are far lower than on the traditional AC ones, which make transmission of energy over long distances uneconomic."

    As a physics person I'm a little confused. Power = (current)^2 x resistance , so to minimize the power loss in transmission lines you would want to want to have them at high voltage and low current. The reason AC lines are used for long distance transmission is because you can use magnetic induction to make transformers that step up the voltage, you cannot do this with DC lines.
  • DesignNerd, on 07/23/2008, -3/+1Why not have it provide AFRICA's electricity?
  • jaybee66, on 07/23/2008, -3/+0This is a bad idea as it would make Europe even more dependent on Arab Islamic nations.

    See my post http://the-goodlife.blogspot.com/2008/07/out-of-fr ...
  • Dquinz63, on 07/23/2008, -2/+1What about at night or during the rainy season? It does no good to have way more than you need sometimes and way less others.
  • sndream, on 07/23/2008, -0/+2Even ignoring energy loss and money. Powering the whole Europe with solar panel from Saharan is just infeasible, England alone use near 100GW, how many transmission tower do you need?
    The power line will be needed to drag across multiple countries, even with redundancy route, the chance of the entire electricity grid got knock out is way too high.

    Remember how half of North America plunge into darkness like 5 to 6 yrs ago? That's only power plant scattered around NA linked together, now imaging all of the power come from 1 place. @_@ The risk is so high that it make Space solar array with microwave transmission sound like eating cake.

    • wunksta, on 07/24/2008, -0/+0youre right
      utilizing all available potential sources of sustainable energy would be the best thing to do, hydro, solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear etc as well as diversifying the centers of energy
    • mrigns, on 07/25/2008, -0/+1It's not from one place, the frigging place is vast. They don't want to build one giant enormous wind collector... -.-
  • jei731, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1Wouldn't it be more efficient and secure to dam the Mediterranean. This would provide hundreds of terawatts of power.
  • klco, on 07/23/2008, -1/+1Stupid comment system... awesome article though.
  • bincoder, on 07/23/2008, -0/+1Thats trading one dependancy on the middle east (oil) for another one (solar).
    How is that going to help Europe?
    Citizens of Africa and the middle east may have other uses for that energy than sending it off to Europe if not today, then tommorow.
    Europe should press harder for wind power. If its all located in Europe, nobody can simply take it all away or cut it off like they seem to be so fond of doing with oil.
    • Nudar, on 07/24/2008, -0/+1dear bincoder,

      where do you think all the citizens of africa and the middle east are moving to? if they don't take the african solar back then they'll eventually take the wind power in europe.
  • beauley, on 07/24/2008, -0/+1With Global Warming on many people's minds, do we have any ideas of the best way to lessen the impact on our future, or maybe a possible relief of its possible ravages or even a possible key to its eventual reversal. Many scientific experts have proposed
    http://www.quazen.com/Science/Technology/Solar-Pow ...
    Solar Power: Source of Endless Energy
  • kris2lee, on 07/24/2008, -0/+1Well, this solution will face similar problems that exists with oil.
  • DrJG, on 07/24/2008, -0/+1A lot of above comments have got the point - the land is in Africa belongs not to Europe or west and new colonialism won't wash, and buying is not the solution, but there is enough space empty in Spain that will do for Europe and finally Spain can pay back the subsidies it has had for the years being in Europe - of course Spain was used badly by most powers before wwII so they can rightly refuse to pay back subsidies and insist on selling the energy and do well for once. As for Africa they could use their own solar energy production and sell overflow to whosoever.

    And Russia has plenty of land and some with sun, some with wind and waves and tides, so they can do well for once too.
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