European scientists have said that through harnessing the power of the desert sun and feeding it into an electricity supergrid, the energy collected could produce enough to meet all of Europe’s electricity needs, and cut CO2 emissions dramatically – all by using the latest in photovoltaic cells and the intense desert heat to boil water and power turbines.

Arnulf Jaeger-Walden, speaking at the Euroscience Open Forum in Barcelona, said that by capturing just 0.3% of the sunlight falling on the Sahara and Middle East deserts Europe’s energy requirements could be met. The expansive solar farms that would harvest this energy would produce electricity either through photovoltaic cells, or by concentrating the intense desert heat to boil water and drive turbines. These measures, combined with power from other renewable sources, such as wind or geothermal, would be channelled into a 5,000 mile supergrid, stretching from Siberia to Morocco and Egypt to Iceland.

The supergrid has become a central focus for EU summits deliberating solutions to the energy and fuel crises. The idea remains in its fledgling stage, but supporters have highlighted the supergrid’s ecological serviceability to help Britain make the ‘green’ switch – however, critics have drawn particular attention to the substantial costs estimated by developers. But despite such financial considerations, the proposal has already answered a more conventional criticism of solar power.

Winning the backing of Gordon Brown and Nicholas Sarkozy, the grid proposal has already answered the most frequent criticism hailed at renewable power – that it is uneconomic because of the unpredictability of the weather. Grid-supporters boast that by drawing power from wind and solar farms across a large strip of Europe, there will be a consistent flow of power being generated.
The design of the grid itself has been evolved to a highly efficient module. Forming the main arteries of the electrical supergrid would be high voltage direct current (DC) power lines. These heavy duty cables emit less energy loss over long distances than traditional alternating current (AC) lines and are three times as efficient.

These alterations are a part of what the EU scientists argue to be a more effective and economic way to meet the renewable energy targets of 2020. Scientists argue that because north African sunlight is an intense stream of consistent energy, solar photovoltaic panels set up in the Sahara could generate up to 300% more electricity produced by equivalent panels in northern Europe.

However, before the proposal can help the EU meet its target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2020, much time, planning and investment is needed. But the scientists working on the project are estimating that with an investment of around £356bn it could produce 100 GW by 2050, which is more than the combined electricity output from all sources in Britain.

Despite any reservations over the project, one thing is already for sure. Britain is more than willing to look for alternative methods to help meet their 2020 requisite. Being set to miss the EU target, the Sahara solution is just one of many foreign affairs that can be hoped-on to solve the UK’s domestic dilemma.

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