From our Jan. 31, 2011 post "Say, About That Plan to Supply 15% of Europe's Electricity from North Africa.... (Look for Desertec to go with Natural Gas instead)":
Some commentators thought it was lunacy to put Europe's power supply in the hands of Tunisia, Algeria, Libya and Morocco.And today's headline story from Policy Innovations:
The French in their haughty way believe they can control the governments of the Maghreb. Events of the last two weeks should give them and the German companies backing the plan reason for concern.
If you've forgotten, Desertec was a planned $555 BILLION plan to use concentrating solar thermal to produce electricity in the North African desert and ship it to Southern Europe. The World Bank was on board, Siemens, E.on, Deutsche Bank, Munich Re and a host of other Germans were ready to make money and then, darn, revolution.
Here's a bit of insight from Solar Novus:
Revolution in Tunisia May Threaten Dii Goals
This article appeared originally on China Dialogue. It is published with kind permission. It was written by Eifion Rees.
As a concept, Desertec was ambitious. Produce abundant clean electricity for Europe from vast concentrating solar power (CSP) plants in the deserts of North Africa and the Middle East.
But after five years attempting to turn theory into practice, the Desertec Industrial Initiative (Dii), a consortium formed in 2009, is effectively dead in the water after being abandoned by the majority of its shareholders. Dii had pledged Desertec infrastructure would meet as much as 15 percent of Europe's electricity needs by 2050. However, in October last year companies chose not to renew their contracts as part of the consortium. It's a long way from 2011, when Dii said Desertec was "all systems go."
It was building a 500MW CSP plant in Morocco; it was in talks with Tunisia and Algeria to do the same; and from 2020 would "scale up" into Egypt, Libya, Syria, Saudi Arabia. All it needed was signatures on paperwork.
The price tag matched the hype. At a cost of 400 billion euros (US$480 billion), Dii would conjure electricity from the deserts of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, feeding it to Europe along high-voltage undersea cables beneath the Mediterranean. Dii estimated the region's wind and solar potential at 800GW across 40,000 square kilometers.
Big names such as Siemens, Bosch, E.On, HSBC, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, and Munich Re signed up. At its height there were some 57 Dii shareholders from 16 countries, with Germany providing the most. But by late 2012, Siemens and Bosch had pulled out and now only three shareholders remain, to whom Dii will become a consultant: ACWA Power (Saudi Arabia), RWE (Germany), and the State Grid Corporation of China (SGCC). SGCC joined up to learn more about transferring renewable power from China's sparsely populated western regions to its populous and power-hungry coastal cities.
Political instability clouded Desertec's prospects. "The Arab Spring uprisings came at just the wrong time for Desertec. Energy security was always a worry, but suddenly it became a reality and investors got nervous," says Dr. Christopher Sansom of Cranfield University in Bedfordshire, an expert on CSP technology.
Wrong region?
With demand for energy in Africa as a whole far outstripping supply, the logic of generating electricity for Europe struck many as bizarre, if not positively post-colonial. At an energy conference in 2012, the vice president of Algeria's National Economic and Social Council also questioned whether European electricity prices would "give us a return on investments."
"It makes sense for the MENA countries to address their own supply issues before looking to export energy to Europe," says Sansom.
Other factors in sinking the project included lack of shareholder consensus on how the electricity should be produced, and which regions should benefit most, MENA or Europe.
Quitting Dii in 2013, the not-for-profit Desertec Foundation—originator of the Desertec concept—cited "many irresolvable disputes . . . in the area of future strategies, obligations and their communication."
Exporting power to Europe was central to the initial Desertec concept. However, obtaining declarations of intent from MENA and European governments proved so arduous that Dii reined in its ambitions....MORE
