Desert visions
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ater may be scarce in the Sahara Desert, but it has plentiful amounts of another natural resource: sunshine. Now, as part of an ambitious initiative called Desertec, countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are moving toward turning this solar abundance into a valuable source of clean electricity. The vision behind Desertec is to build a network of solar and wind power plants across deserts in the MENA and to distribute that electricity throughout the region and to Europe. Desertec’s goal is “to satisfy a substantial part of the energy needs of the MENA countries and to meet up to 15 percent of Europe’s electricity demand by 2050.” Its first pilot project will be built in Morocco in 2013, taking advantage of an existing undersea transmission line that connects Morocco to Spain. “Energy from the deserts is the largest energy source on Earth,” said Paul van Son, CEO of the Desertec Industrial Initiative (Dii), a consortium of private organizations working to bring the Desertec concept to fruition. “Our aim is to make the best use of it for the benefit of millions of people.” Desertec began in 2003 as the brainchild of Gerhard Knies, a retired highenergy physicist who calculated that the amount of sun that hits the world’s des-
MRS BULLETIN
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www.mrs.org/bulletin • Energy Quarterly
683
VOLUME 36 • SEPTEMBER 2011
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Regional Initiative
Corinna Wu
cilitator, encouraging governments and funders to take on solar and wind power projects. One of its first reference projects will be a 500-MW solar power plant developed in cooperation with the Moroccan Agency for Solar Energy (MASEN). The plant will use a combination of technologies: 400 MW of concentrated solar power (CSP) and 100 MW of photovoltaics (PV). Eighty percent of the electricity generated will be exported to Europe, carried by the transmission line now used to ferry electricity in the other direction from Spain. Dii is also working with the utility company STEG Energie Renouvelable to examine the feasibility of building large-scale solar and wind projects and transmission lines in Tunisia. Egypt and Algeria are also talking with Dii to find avenues of cooperation, according to van Son. A variety of power generation technologies are being considered for Desertec, including CSP, PV, and wind. CSP plants use focused sunlight to heat a material such as molten salt or sand. That stored heat can then be tapped to produce steam to power a turbine. When the Desertec concept was being developed a few years ago, CSP was the main focus, Wolff said. But recently, PV prices have dropped enough to make that technology practical. In some areas of the MENA, especially in the Western Sahara, wind might make the most sense. “The market conditions of these technologies are very different,” van Son said. “Wind is almost at market, and PV is rightly on its way to being integrated, whereas CSP still needs strong support. We believe that these technologies will, after a certain phase of incentives, be able to compete in the markets without financial support.” The
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