Europe Eyes Africa for Solar Power

Solar-thermal plants throughout the desert would send power across the Mediterranean Sea

By Paul Voosen
Scientific American

For centuries, Mediterranean countries have found countless ways to disagree -- over religion, ethnicity, colonialism and trade. But there are signs the region might yet unite in pursuit of a common goal: renewable energy.

European government and industry have been eyeing tracts of sun-drenched, vacant land in North Africa and the Middle East for some time. And now, officials and business executives are beginning to sweat out the details that could see renewable power sprouting in the desert.

Their vision is ambitious. By 2050, massive solar thermal plants, which concentrate the sun's energy using mirrors to heat steam-generating media, would sprawl across the Sahara and Middle East, feeding most of their power to their host nations. Leftover energy, meanwhile, would travel north on a new €45 billion grid to meet 15 percent of Europe's electricity needs.

The technology to build the plants exists and industry is ready, if certain political conditions are met, said Gerhard Knies, a German physicist who has become the leading advocate for the solar thermal plans, which are projected to cost hundreds of billions of euros.

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