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Europe To Import Sahara Solar Power Within 5 Years
An anonymous reader writes "If just 1% of the Sahara Desert were covered in concentrating solar panels it would create enough energy to power the entire world. That's a powerful number, and the European Union has decided to jump on its proximity to the Sahara in order to reap some benefits from the untapped solar energy beaming down on Northern Africa. Yesterday, European Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger announced that Europe will start importing solar energy from the Sahara within the next five years. It is estimated that the initiative will cost €400 billion ($495 billion). It's part of an EU goal to derive 20% of its power from renewable sources by 2020. From the article: 'The EU is backing the construction of new electricity cables, known as inter-connectors, under the Mediterranean Sea to carry this renewable energy from North Africa to Europe. Some environmental groups have warned these cables could be used instead to import non-renewable electricity from coal- and gas-fired power stations in north Africa.' To this the energy minister replied, essentially, 'Good question, we'll get back to you on that.'"
Well, we're talking about North Africa, not the Middle East. Sure, they're close to each other geographically, but the political realities are different. Further, the direct foreign investment of this sort of "infrastructure" could be beneficial. The influx of money should raise the standard of living those countries and it might encourage a different sort of economic growth than what we've seen in economies fueled by petrodollars.
Some environmental groups have warned these cables could be used instead to import non-renewable electricity from coal- and gas-fired power stations in north Africa.
Why are environmentalists always negative focussing on the cables, we should be celebrating, this is a significant time for humanity, getting away from fossil fuels to solar and thermal power..
i'm sure a few species will die because of this, i'm sure some habitats will get destroyed because of this, but imagine removing the dependence and waste of fossil fuels, this would benefit everyone.
It's not a typo if you understood the meaning!
How does Africa already have a choke-hold on energy production? Are you confusing Africa with the Middle East?
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." - Pablo Picasso
If you have power to spare, even moderately efficient energy storage solutions become viable.
A water->hydrogen->water cycle may be less than 50% efficient, but then just take 2%.
Same for solar thermal storage in molten salt solutions.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
At least the minister's response quoted in the article is positive. The summary butchered it:
"This is a good question but not a question to destroy our project," Oettinger said. "This question must be answered by a good answer and so we need ways to ensure that our import of electricity is from renewables."
To quote Firesign Theatre, it's a "power so great, it can only be used for good or evil!"
All seriousness aside, we need better energy conduits from these arid, sun-soaked regions. There is an abundance of solar energy waiting to be tapped in our deserts. Many, many, many human ills could be easily tackled by abundant energy. Sure, 1% of the Sahara can power our current usage. That fails to account for the fact that use increases as cost decreases. I'm sure if we managed to capture a much larger fraction of it, we'd put it to many unforseen uses, such as food synthesis, carbon sequestration, and so on.
I think it's high time we started tapping seriously into the energy arriving at earth daily. There is no energy shortage. There is only an energy collection and redistribution shortage.
Program Intellivision!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity
And Europe has enough mountains to do this with.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
You could cover a similar area in Spain and avoid some of the transmission loss. Spain could certainly use the business.
...suddenly reflected a hell of a lot less heat back into the atmosphere, you're going to alter the climate drastically -- which may well reduce the amount of energy you have to tap, as it's likely to cause a regional cooling, which may result in greater cloud formation. I'd want to see the climatologists study the proposal. More to the point, is there an advantage in using solar panels over having the sunlight heat water (which is vastly more efficient) and then use the steam to generate electricity?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I don't think anyone literally expects a single 1% area to be covered by solar panels and for this to be the sole worldwide energy generator. It was more an indication of the amount of energy hitting the earth's surface and what little amount of this energy we use.
- Chuq
They are not nutcases. They are powerful pressure groups, able to influence the policies that rule your life. Don't dismiss this as the work of discredited extremists, what government minister even has meetings with crazy extremists?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
They are not nutcases. They are powerful pressure groups, able to influence the policies that rule your life.
Unfortunately those two things are not mutually exclusive.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
I completely agree. Spain is investing quite a bit in Morocco lately, for it is very close geographically and the costs are quite low. Not as low as in China but again, it's easier to work with people who at least uses the same alphabet as you do. In Morocco they speak French but many people speak Spanish too. It seems that we will finally have the kind of mutually beneficial relationship with them as other countries have managed to have with their former colonies. We are only a century behind or so.
It sounds easy ... but does the average person (or even slashdot reader) have any idea how big the Sahara Desert really is? Answer: About as big as the whole of the USA.
Plus there's the teeny problem of building something stable on top of shifting sand dunes and transporting the stuff once you generate it (make liquid hydrogen and ship it?)
No sig today...
A large proportion of the Sahara desert is a rocky desert, so there are few sandstorms. Indeed, the technology used has been tested in US rocky deserts, very similar to the Saharan ones.
The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head
So this power will have to travel through such stable, well-governed countries as Algeria and Libya.
Unless you put the power station in Morocco or Tunisia...
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
How does Africa already have a choke-hold on energy production?
Pay more attention. He didn't say Africa, he said unstable region.
Both Africa and the M.E. are part of one big, contiguous, mostly-Muslim unstable region.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
The environmentalists are right to ask the question, there are antecedents. In Europe (Spain in particular(Spanish)) there have already have cases of diesel power being passed off as renewable energy - they got caught only because they were arrogant enough to pass it off as solar energy... at night. If they had not been so greedy we would still be non the wiser, and the company get's to both sell dirty power AND collect on renewable energy subsidies. What's worse, nobody in the upper management or local politics has yet been prosecuted - halls of power protecting their own it would appear.
So the question the environmentalists are calling it right. If this happens IN Europe, what can we expect when it's over in Africa unless there are strict transparent controls put in place? One thing is certain: There will always be Companies that will do almost anything to make a buck - we need to ask and address how the system can be abused before we invest public funds into it.
NO. There is a very good reason they are asking this question. In Europe (Spain in particular(Spanish)) diesel power has been passed off as renewable energy. The company get's to both sell dirty power AND collect on renewable energy subsidies. What's worse, nobody in the upper management or local politics has yet been prosecuted for the massive fraud - halls of power protecting their own it would appear.
So the question the environmentalists are calling it right. If this happens IN Europe, what can we expect when it's over in Africa unless there are strict transparent controls put in place? One thing is certain: There will always be Companies that will do almost anything to make a buck - we need to ask and address how the system can be abused before we invest public funds into it.
we have messed with the people in that region in a hostile way for a long time: Crusades
Has everyone forgotten that the Muslims invaded Europe through Iberia/Spain 350 years before the First Crusade?
All of Europe would be Muslim if it weren't for a forward thinking (hack, spit, cough) Frenchman 1250 years ago.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
True, Arabic is the official language, but I have yet to meet a Moroccan not speaking French.
As per Wikipedia, it's the country's "second unofficial language": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morocco#Languages
Unlike some other "educated" countries, the people of Morocco have realized that some people in other countries speak different languages, and that you can't overcome this by simply talking at them with an increased volume and decreased speed.
I hate printers.
The EU has bigger economy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)
Wait a minute, aren't you supposed to be part of the anti-PC words crowd? Do we have to call it "more renewable" energy now to make you happy? How about "Not Able To Be Burnt Up"(NATBBU?). The idea is to bootstrap ourselves using energy dense oil and coal to reach a level of tech where we can use the more plentiful energy sources which are more dispersed. Call me crazy, but working on a multi-century project to push back some of the desert, build some infrastructure in a wasteland*, and reaping huge long-term rewards sounds good to me; just because there are some wack jobs who do think that calling something "green" makes it good doesn't mean real critical thought can't be applied to a problem like this and have it result in a positive outcome.
* Don't go calling the north slope a wasteland. Do an assay of the biomass in a cubic meter of summer tundra versus the Sahara.
You aren't allowed to comment on geopolitics any more until you can tell the difference between different sorts of people that aren't white...
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
And how did you conclude that the environmentalists are against it just because they asked how you ensure that the energy does actually come from renewable resources. Did you read a call to "ban the cables" anywhere? No.
The Energy Commissioner said that it was a good question, and he is right. You don't just lay down a cable and just hope that the power sent through it is renewable. You need to put procedures in place to guarantee it, otherwise you have just wasted your money.
The influx of money should raise the standard of living [in] those countries and it might encourage a different sort of economic growth than what we've seen in economies fueled by petrodollars.
What growth? Countries which get essentially "free money" often have shrinking economies . Whether they get paid for oil underground or sun shining on the ground doesn't matter. They don't become poor, but they end up importing everything because local labor is so unattractive an expensive. See Dutch disease etc., this was just recently discussed on /. in relation to the "trillion dollar ore miracle" in Afghanistan.
And these solar arrays are probably built by non-local companies, so no local know-how is rewarded. Then the states just get monetary compensation for maintenance work, not for fabricating anything. Now how to build a local economy.
I will, because it's a damm good question.
The makers of Thalidomide thought they were trying to do something positive as well I bet. As the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. It's not enough to try and do something positive, one must be sure one is actually doing something positive. This is the real world where real actions have real consequences, not your first grade classroom where everybody gets a trophy for trying - even if they don't actually accomplish anything.
It's easy (and childish) to simply dismiss the concerns as being from "those [obstructive] environmentalists, it's much harder to honestly answer the question.
It's almost as if you didn't actually read their statement or bother to attempt to understand it. They didn't say "lets not build this", they said "lets make sure this accomplishes it's stated goal".
Europe buys oil from Libya since ages.
No problem there.
You really need to think big.
It's a bonus that Morocco and Algeria are in this project.
These Countries need a decent source of income.
And if East Sahara is wired up, there will be no stopping wiring up Egypt, Jordan
Mauretania, Niger, Chad.
And why don't the Saudis add themselves to that grid?
The Chinese could tap into Taklamakan,
the US surely has some spare desert to make useful.
The US has tonnes of space in sunny deserts to build Solar stations. The problem is that nobody in the US wants to pay to run the power cables from these areas to population centres.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
Yes, they are. And no, they are not powerful.
Little anecdote: in the Netherlands a number of us want to build a second nuclear powerplant. Obviously greenpeace is opposed to this, so they staged a protest by climbing up the old city hall(medieval building) and raising a giant flag. Then they sat there for a couple of hours.
You know what this stunt got them? A 3 line article in the newspaper featuring a comment from a local police officer who in passing by had commented on the fact that they had attached themselves to the same hooks we used to hang convicted prostitutes.
Do you get the gist from the article that the aforementioned environmentalists were in any way being taken seriously? They get 2 lines and a curt dismissal, nothing more. kdawson then went out of his way to include only those first 2 lines, knowing full well there's a group of Slashdotians who will start foaming at the mouth when they read it.
The real environmentalists have several political parties which they can choose from that can influence policy. The nutcases stand on the sidelines and are mostly ignored until they get dangerous, at which time we have them removed by the local authorities.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.