Global Warming Bill passes House

[Louis VI the Fat]

I once read a report that said that with today's technology, a solar plant of 10.000km2 (About New Jersey?) could provide all the energy needs of Europe. If build, unfortunately, in the Sahara.

Luckily, America has the space and the sunshine in the Southwest.

Ah. Things are at last moving forward.

On Monday, a group of companies including some very big industrial concerns - Siemens, RWE, E.On - met with representatives of the German government and other political players to sign a memorandum of understanding that could eventually see the flowering of desert power - the Desertec Industrial Initiative.

Partners will now spend three years putting together viable financial packages that could plant solar facilities across large swathes of the Sahara by 2020.

There is talk of 400bn euros being invested. For comparison, that would dwarf the cost of the Iter fusion power project.


Remember those startling high-tech photos of mirrors gleaming in a Californian dawn that filled the covers of glossy magazines back in the 1980s? That's a concentrated solar thermal power station.
So is the space-age tower rising from Spanish soil, just outside Seville, which may soon provide enough electricity to meet that city's needs.

The Desertec project's initial goal is "to produce sufficient power to meet around 15% of Europe's electricity requirements and a substantial portion of the power needs of the producer countries".

These will be in North Africa and the Middle East, probably stretching round as far as Jordan, whose Prince Hassan bin Talal declared that "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 EU, West Asia and North Africa".

But the dreams are even bigger. Why not power much more of Europe from the region? Why not electrify much of South America from the Atacama desert and the mountain tops of Patagonia? Sydney and Melbourne from the Simpson desert, and western China from the expanding Gobi?

One reason why not may turn out to be security security of supply. Why trade dependence on Middle Eastern gas for dependence on Middle Eastern solar electricity, some would ask.

Politically, the project will build better bridges between the EU and countries that would like to be closer to it; other benefits could flow over those bridges. For EU nations, one of the attractions is that it provides a partial route to the target of providing 20% of the bloc's energy by 2020 - a target that, in many observers' eyes, is considerably more ambitious than the 20% greenhouse gas reductions that the EU has also pledged.

1) Why oh why is this mostly a German project, instead of an EU one. :bangshead:

2) We should never have given up on Algeria. We're swapping dependence on oil states for dependence on solar states. :bangsheadsomemore:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/

[Xiahou]

2) We should never have given up on Algeria. We're swapping dependence on oil states for dependence on solar states. :bangsheadsomemore:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/

At least you can stockpile oil in the event of a disruption....

[Crazed Rabbit]

For those pondering 'Why not build a bunch of solar farms in desert states of the USA?''

A huge wind power plant, with already hundreds of millions USD invested, was canceled;

HOUSTON (AP) - T. Boone Pickens disclosed today that his plans for the world's largest wind farm in the Texas Panhandle have been scrapped.

The Dallas energy baron says he's now looking for a home for 687 giant wind turbines that he's already ordered. Those turbines stand on pylons

Pickens has already ordered the turbines, which stand on 400-foot-tall pylons - taller than most 30-story buildings.

In Pickens' words, "My garage won't hold them. They've got to go someplace."

Pickens' company Mesa Power ordered the turbines from General Electric in a $2 billion investment a little more than a year ago. Pickens says he has leases on about 200,000 acres in Texas that were planned for the project, and he might place some of the turbines there. But he says there's a problem in getting power from the proposed site in the Panhandle to a distribution system.

The problem is the distribution of power; it's clear you can't simply build lines from the desert to the cities.

CR

[Vladimir]

For those pondering 'Why not build a bunch of solar farms in desert states of the USA?''

A huge wind power plant, with already hundreds of millions USD invested, was canceled;


The problem is the distribution of power; it's clear you can't simply build lines from the desert to the cities.

CR

Though, the ultimate reason he cites for changing courses this time around is constraints on transmission lines.

From this brief sentence it appears the environmentalist Luddites are at it again. Or, that's just my bias talking.