400-billion-euro plan to pump African solar power to Europe

[Brännvin]

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp...qaxt7i4EHeKODw

Twelve European companies launched a 400-billion-euro (560-billion-dollar) initiative Monday to plant huge solar farms in Africa and the Middle East to produce energy for Europe.

The consortium says the massive proposal could provide up to 15 percent of Europe's electricity needs by 2050.

Engineering giants ABB and Siemens, energy groups E.ON and RWE and financial institutions Deutsche Bank and Munich Re are among the companies which signed a protocol in Munich.

"Today we have taken a step forward" towards the project's realisation, said Nikolaus von Bomhard, head of the reinsurance giant Munich Re, which hosted the signing.

The Desertec Industrial Initiative (DII) would build solar-power generators from Morocco to Saudi Arabia and pump electricity to Europe via undesea cables.

It would also provide a "substantial portion of the power needs of the producer countries," the Desertec foundation said in a statement, and transform sea water into drinking and irrigation water for local populations.

Munich Re board member Torsten Jeworrek said the European companies involved had pledged to work "as equals in a sincere and fair" manner with producer countries.

For Jordan's Prince Hassan ibn Talal: "The partnerships that will be formed across the regions as a result of the Desertec project will open a new chapter in relations between the people of the European Union, West Asia and North Africa."

Many details still have to be worked out however, including where to install the plants, when the power would come on and how much it would cost, potential profits, political stability in some areas and of course, financing.

Renewable energy analyst Sebastaian Zank at West LB bank, which is not involved in the project, said it might succeed but only "in the very, very long term.

"As long as there are no transmission networks between these two continents this is more or less a nice future fantasy," Zank told AFP.

Under the protocol, a Desertec study office to be established by October will have three years to elaborate plans to create the network of solar farms and transmission networks and find the funds.

Representatives of the Arab League and the Egyptian energy ministry also attended the protocol's signing.

Other companies invoved are the Spanish firm ABENGOA Solar and the Algerian conglomerate Cevital along with several German banks and engineering companies.

The Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper said in June that electricity could begin flowing to Europe within 10 years.

West LB analyst Zank said some plants were already being developed in North Africa and "one can say that solar thermal energy will already be produced next year, but not with the intention of exporting this electricity to Europe."

Undersea networks could be built quickly, he added, but "at the moment the costs are so high it is not economically viable."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso have hailed the initiative however, though others have voiced criticism.

German Social Democratic deputy Hermann Scheer told AFP it was not necessary to go to North Africa to collect the sun's rays, and added: "We could invest the 400 billion euros here" in the recession-hit eurozone.

He also preferred a network of decentralised operators that produced renewable energy from many sources rather than having one key project in the hands of major corporations.

Others doubt producer countries would fully benefit from a plan designed with Europe in mind, leading the business daily Handelsblatt to warn of potential "eco-colonialism."

The four key engineering giants companies; Siemens, E.ON and RWE are Germans and ABB is Swedish, without mentioning those corrupt German banks behind this project.

Now I do not understand the why this amount of money that will be invested in a mega project in Africa which a future is still totally uncertain.

They could have invest all this money in sustainable energy projects of wind turbines in northern Europe, where the potential is demonstrably huge.

[Beorn]

The future of European power is nuclear. All this money being spent upon overseas energy and minor renewable resources is absolutely sinful when one considers the costs and efficiency of nuclear power.

[Brännvin]

No doubt about it.. But requires raw materials such as uranium which the continent is poor.

Eolic energy has great potential in the countries of northern Europe without any external dependency. Today Denmark gets 15 percent of its electricity from wind power and they achieved that in only a decade.

It needs massive investment, this is just one of the reasons for that possible project in Africa is ridiculous and suspect, the money could be invested all here

Wind turbine technology projections suggest that the wind energy potential may be equivalent to almost 20 times energy demand in 2020, with the biggest onshore wind potentials in North-Western Europe and the greatest offshore wind potential in the North Sea, Baltic Sea and the Atlantic Ocean with some potential in the Mediterranean and Black Sea.

http://www.reinforcedplastics.com/vi...n-2020-report/

[Lahtari]

No doubt about it.. But requires raw materials such as uranium which the continent is poor.

But we still do have enough for being self-sufficient, I think. There's even uranium in Finland, it just comes in so low concentrations that it has been simply unprofitable to mine for now.

Wind power is something worth developing as a secondary source, though. A minus is that it's just so damn ugly.

[Crvena zvezda]

Most of the countries in question in this project are massively wealthy oil states with close to two trillion lying in their Sovereign Wealth Funds [or are capable off].

If they want this project to go ahead they canf und the 400 billion euros out of their own pockets.

But the environmental argument for this is absurd.

The countries in question (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, probably UAE and Kuwait also) have combined some 200 million people.

This massive amount of cash will surely go into desalination and turning desert into farmland [ the article it's self mentions irrigation projects ].

Imaging the massive amounts of water required to do this. Desalation is not profitable or environmental for this. Imagine how much damage they will do to the Mediterranean, Dead Sea and Persian Gulf this would do.

Add to this the huge population increase from their high birthrate and their large immigration from the third word <-- remember in the countries in question Indian labourers as the population refuses to do the most simple tasks.

[Steffan]

No doubt about it.. But requires raw materials such as uranium which the continent is poor.

http://www.reinforcedplastics.com/vi...n-2020-report/

But the countries rich in nuclear fuel are ones we should be able to depend on for decades to come: Australia and Canada. Doesn't really get more friendly or stable than that.

[Octothorpe]

If you flip the switch on that thing the other direction, does it suck up Africans and throw them into the Sun?

Serious: yes, nuclear is the only real-world option. Solar? Not until photovoltaic cells are cheap to manufacture. Wind? I like it, but it's dicey to depend on something that can randomly stop. Nukes are already a mature technology, and the waste problem is political, not technological (Yucca Mountain is ready, no waiting required!). Fire them puppies up!

[Albion]

Why does this have to be in Africa? Why do we need to be dependent on African energy now? Any political dispute with Europe and the North African states it would be sites in would probably switch off the supply and use it as a diplomatic weapon.
It would be better in Southern Spain, Southern Italy or Macedonia and Albania, it would provide some money to these areas as well as a few jobs and would be better spent than having it in North Africa and having the populations there benefit from the investment.

[Gaztelu]

I don't like this. The Western World has become too dependent on Africa and Asia for energy and manufacturing. Europe has come another step closer to losing its sovereignty.

[Crossbow]

Europe is dominated by capitalism, there is no other ideology left.