NOTE: Read the Drawbacks and Failure of the project from heading (3).
THE SAHARA DESERT
The Sahara desert, a hostile desert without compromise, there is no place on earth as dry, hot and vast, but in theory, deserts should be the perfect place on earth for building a solar plant. After all, it's the most abundant and clean source of energy we have. They're spacious, relatively flat, rich in silicon needed to make the panels and never short of sunlight. There's so much power that if we cover just 1.2 percent area with solar panels of the Sahara desert having a total area of 43,000 square miles, we could harness enough power to meet the world's energy needs. So, why don't we just build large solar farms in the Sahara?
1) BEING THE BIGGEST DESERT
The Sahara desert is the biggest desert on earth and one of the largest biomes on the whole planet. It's hard to overstate its vastness, the desert stretches over 11 countries and roughly covers an area the size of Canada, the USA or China. You might envision the Sahara as one of endless rolling sand dunes, but nothing could be further from the truth, in fact only 20 percent of the Sahara consists of sand dunes, the remaining 80 consists of rugged mountain ranges, vast sandstones and extensive gravel plains.
If you observe from the world's map, you'll see that Sahara receives a ridiculous amount of energy from the sun, well over 100 times more energy than humanity currently consumes annually. While no amount of engineering could harness 100% of the energy raining in the desert every day, capturing just a fraction of it is enough to provide societies with abundant clean power, which would bring one of the greatest economic booms the continent of Africa has ever experienced, powering the entire continent, and profiting from the excess energy flowing into Europe nearby. However, while the energy provided by the sun is free and virtually limitless, the same cannot be said about the costs and building materials required to bring such a project to life, and the projected total cost of plans formulated to this endeavor often run as high as the trillion dollar range, but this didn't stop some companies from trying.
2) PLANS OF BUILDING SOLAR FARMS
The German-Led Initiative had plans for a half-trillion dollar investment fund, that would invest in power generation and transmission infrastructure across Africa and the Middle East. In the 2000s, engineers thought about the options of renewable energy production on a large scale, the technologies for solar and wind energy were still in their infancy and quite expensive. At the time, physicists and engineers from Germany and North Africa developed the Desert Tech idea, it was based on the understanding that it's cheaper to produce solar energy at a large scale in Africa, and transport it to Europe instead of producing it directly in Europe. The Desert Tech concept was very convincing to many people because it was the most cost-effective means for a European energy transition, it was attractive for many companies because it was at the same time forward-thinking and sustainable, and it preserved the predominance of big companies as only big players could handle this technology and scale of investments.
The plan was formulated with concentrated solar power in mind, very different from photovoltaic solar panels, which are quite expensive at the time. The mirrors of the solar plants would be spread out along the Sahara and Arabian deserts, especially around the perimeter of the deserts, since a lack of infrastructure made building in the heart of the desert especially difficult and expensive.
3) THE PLAN'S DRAWBACKS
Unfortunately, plans like those envisioned by Desert Tech encountered an overload of challenges and opposition, it turned out that harnessing the power of the desert is more complicated than it seems, one of the main problems these plans faced was the problem of energy transportation. Sure you can produce a lot of energy in the Sahara, but if the power is not going to be consumed on site, you will need to transmit it to places where you can sell it for a profit, specifically to Europe, and to achieve this, we would need to deploy the Cross Mediterranean power lines capable of transmitting electricity with minimal losses over long distances. But nothing had ever been built on this scale before, and even the most technologically advanced power cables lose about 3% of energy per every 1000 kilometers. The longest power link is in Brazil, the Rio Madera line, and transports power over a distance of around 2400 kilometers. For Desert Tech to be a success, the energy would need to be transported from the Sahara to Europe more than 3000 kilometers. While the technology for this kind of transmission infrastructure exists, they are bound to greatly reduce the profit margins of every energy project planned in the Sahara.
So, even if the engineering aspects of energy transportation were to be solved, the projects could not escape their next challenge, the missing infrastructure.
4) REASONS OF THE PROJECT'S FAILURE
Since, most of the Sahara is uninhabited, covering a lot of the area with solar generators would not displace communities and local fauna, however, low population density proved to be a double-edged sword. Since, the lack of local infrastructure made construction unnecessarily hard and costly, the heart of the Sahara is almost devoid of anything resembling a transportation highway, which makes the construction of mega projects, a big headache. New roads and support infrastructure would need to be built before advancing further into the desert, and this is definitely going to eat into the profit margins of the project. To make things worse, money, a lack of infrastructure and engineering were not the only things standing in the way of the plans.
Part of the reason for the failure of the Desert Tech idea in the 2010s was that the developments met strong opposition from experts who pointed out that Desert Tech could create a geopolitical mess, and make Europe dependent on foreign countries. A direct power connection to Africa could be cut at any time and potentially be taken before of as an instrument. In addition, the political situation made any long-term planning and investments difficult for foreign investors, who were very cautious to put money into these very volatile countries.
When all of these challenges were factored in, building large-scale solar power developments in the Sahara desert became less attractive for investors, which led to multiple failed projects in the region.
Another factor that changed the course of things was the plummeting cost of solar photovoltaics over the last decade, which ended up working against Dessert Tech's initial plans, which were based primarily on concentrated solar thermal energy.
5) CURRENT SITUATIONS
In the current market environment, solar photovoltaics had become so inexpensive that European countries can now build their solar developments within their own territories, while still being cost competitive with fossil fuels and other methods of electricity generation.
What do you think about this idea, do you think we should be building more solar farms in the Sahara, let's know your thoughts?
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