"How Africa's desert sun can bring Europe power"

"How Africa's desert sun can bring Europe power"

Europe is considering plans to spend more than £5bn on a string of giant solar power stations along the Mediterranean desert shores of northern Africa and the Middle East.

More than a hundred of the generators, each fitted with thousands of huge mirrors, would generate electricity to be transmitted by undersea cable to Europe and then distributed across the continent to European Union member nations, including Britain.

Billions of watts of power could be generated this way, enough to provide Europe with a sixth of its electricity needs and to allow it to make significant cuts in its carbon emissions. At the same time, the stations would be used as desalination plants to provide desert countries with desperately needed supplies of fresh water.

In my opinion, this is way overdue. The world should be 'going green' by now and reverting 'warfare' monies to alternative power supplies. That's what 'homeland security' should be as the price of addiction to foreign oil in the U.S. is about $3 trillion, judging from an estimate at one of the debt clock pages.

Scientists estimate that sunlight could provide 10,000 times the amount of energy needed to fulfil humanity's current energy needs. Transforming that solar radiation into a form to be exploited by humanity is difficult, however.

The article speculates about two issues preventing this from furthering -- money & money. Since the source isn't 'renewable' the 'experts' in the article speculate about "lost income" once it's "hits the mirror" but I'll disagree in the sense that "renewable solar energy" exists and this seems conspiracy-minded in a special-interest sense.

Those 'experts' & the oil industry want to see their skyrocketing profits while the people of the world suffer in some places minus electricity, minus clean water.

This article from yesterday (12/3/07) (on a small scale) admits the technology is renewable:

"First solar-powered billboard erected by PG&E"

The billboard, visible from the 9th St. exit off Highway 101, is outfitted with 20 solar modules that provide up to 3.4 kilowatts of renewable solar energy to the grid of San Francisco-based PG&E.

zfacts.com...

[edit on 4-12-2007 by anhinga]

It's been estimated that just 500 Km. sq. of photovoltaics in the Sahara would provide enough power per day to equal total global energy demands...It's insane, in fact, criminal, that this technology isn't implemented on a huge scale that could bring places like the sub-saharan regions out of 4rd world poverty and up to a good standard of living.

The amount of money thats given in 'tied aid' to the african and other nations-in-crisis around the globe by the IMF/Worldbank could easily create a stable energy infrastructure for those countries, and enable them to repay the ridiculous amounts of interest on the aid-contracts that organisations like the Worldbank lock these nations into with the surplus energy created...but a non-dependant nation that can't be forced to take fertilizers for farming or inapropriate technologies as part of the tied-aid deals doesn't make any money does it?

reply to post by citizen smith


Have you ever played this game called Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri? One of my favourite civilization building games. Anyway, there's a quote in that game that really applies to this situation:

Life is merely an orderly decay of energy states, and survival requires the continual discovery of new energy to pump into the system. He who controls the sources of energy controls the means of survival.

CEO Nwabudike Morgan
"The Centauri Monopoly"

Until the powers that be figure out how to lock-in and monopolize this renewable source, don't expect major powers to help out. The initiative will be taken by venture capitalists instead, especially now that fossil fuels are getting more expensive.

I've only just recentlystarted the process of researching the subject of 'Distributed solar power networks for developing nations' for a dissertation. I totally agree with the reason that such projects are kept off the table...

As J.P.Morgan is reputed to have said to Nikolai Tesla "If I can't put a meter on it, it will never see the light of day"