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A Place In The Sun
The European Commission's Institute for Energy is studying proposals to build "solar farms" covering an area the size of Wales in the Sahara and Middle Eastern deserts, claiming that 0.3 percent of light falling on these regions could provide the EU with all its energy needs.
The scheme has the backing of Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy, it is reported. Combined with "EU windfarms" in the North and Baltic Seas, the continents energy needs could be met with natural energy alone: Some nations, like Britain and Denmark, could export power to needy countries further south.
It is costed at just under £36 billion (€45.5bn) and would involve laying cables under the sea between Morocco and Spain and Sicily and Tunisia. The "daunting" costs reported in the Guardian also include restructuring the entire infrastructures of "transfer" nations such as Greece and Turkey.
It isn't only the costs which are daunting. An area the size of Wales would either mean one big solar farm (unlikely, as the risk of the sun being clouded over needs to be spread) or numerous little ones (potentially unwieldy).
Where would they be located? Few North African or Middle Eastern countries are reassuringly stable. Our dependency on Russian gas and oil has many European nations in a painful political fix; would we "rent" land from the Middle East to farm their sunlight? Or "buy" vast tracts of desert in some colonial deal?
Europe's power supply would be an irresistible terrorist target. Would European security forces be charged with the defence of the solar farms, or would this role be entrusted to local armies (who may have better things to do).
It looks like we'll have plenty of time to discuss these repercussions, at least.
"Scientists working on the project admit that it would take many years and huge investment to generate enough solar energy from north Africa to power Europe but envisage that by 2050 it could produce 100 GW, more than the combined electricity output from all sources in the UK, with an investment of around €450bn", reports the Guardian.
