Vast farms of solar panels in the Sahara could provide clean electricity for the whole of Europe, according to EU scientists working on a plan to pool the region’s renewable energy.
Harnessing the power of the desert sun is at the centre of an ambitious scheme. The plan is to build a Euro 450 billion European supergrid that would allow countries across the continent to share electricity from abundant green sources such as wind en ergy in the UK and Denmark, and geothermal energy from Iceland and Italy.
The idea is gaining growing political support in Europe with Gordon Brown and Nicholas Sarkozy recently backing the north African solar plan.
Speaking recently at the Euroscience Open Forum in Barcelona, Arnulf Jaeger-Walden of the European commission’s Institute for Energy, said it would require the capture of just 0.3 per cent of the light falling on the Sahara and Middle East deserts to provide all of Europe’s energy needs.
Three times more
Because the sunlight is more intense, solar photovoltaic (PV) panels in northern Africa could generate up to three times the electricity compared with similar panels in northern Europe.
The idea of developing solar farms in the Mediterranean region and north Africa was given a boost by President Sarkozy of France earlier this month when he highlighted solar farms in north Africa as a key part of the work of his newly formed Mediterranean Union.
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 they envisage that by 2050 it could produce 100 GW, more than the combined electricity output from all sources in the UK.
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