EU Looks South To A Greener Sahara
Posted by Martin_Connelly on Wednesday, Jun 23, 2010
The Sarah Desert is windy, sunny, and close to Europe, which makes it the perfect place to put solar panels and windmills. Lots and lots of solar panels and windmills. The EU is hoping to hit 20% renewable energy by 2020 (a pretty catchy plan), and it’s looking to the desert to get things started.
This isn’t some dream of free power for all mankind, it’s something that’s actually happening, right now.
European Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger put it this way: “I think some models starting in the next 5 years will bring some hundreds of megawatts to the European market.”
One of the projects is Desertec, which Oettinger called “is a vision for the next 20 to 40 years.” It’s really more of consortium than anything, but one backed by Siemens, RWE and Deutsche Bank, among other firms.
One of the technologies they’re planning on using is Concentrating Solar Thermal Power (CSP) plants which “use mirrors to concentrate sunlight to create heat which is used to produce steam to drive steam turbines and electricity generators.”
The main advantage CSP plants have over Photo Voltaic (PV) arrays is that they can produce power 24 hours a day, and thus don’t require the ginormous power storage systems.
Right now, they have a lot of pretty maps, but not much else. It’ll be cool to see what kind of development happens in the next five-forty years.
Via: DVICE Reuters and DesertecFiled under:
About the author
Martin Connelly is a freelance transmedia journalist based in St. John's, Newfoundland. He's worked across borders, both figurative and literal: as a newsroom editor for China Central Television In...
