guardian.co.uk,
Leo Hickman in Cairo, Wednesday 2 November 2011
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| Morocco has been chosen as the first location for a project to build a vast network of solar and windfarms. Photograph: Michael Melford/NGS/Corbis |
Morocco has
been chosen as the first location for a German-led, €400bn project to build a
vast network of solar and windfarms across North Africa and the Middle East to
provide 15% of Europe's electricity supply by 2050.
The
Desertec Industrial Initiative (DII), a coalition of companies including E.ON,
Siemens, Munich Re and Deutsche Bank, announced at its annual conference being
held in Cairo on Wednesday that "all systems are go in Morocco", with
construction of the first phase of a 500 MW solar farm scheduled to start next
year. The precise location of the €2bn plant is yet to be finalised, but it is
expected to be built near the desert city of Ouarzazate. It will use parabolic
mirrors to generate heat for conventional steam turbines, as opposed to the
photovoltaic cells used in the UK.
The 12
square kilometre Moroccan solar farm will, said Paul van Son, Dii's CEO, be a
"reference project" to prove to investors and policy makers in both
Europe and the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region that the Desertec vision
is not a dream-like mirage, but one that can be a major source of renewable
electricity in the decades ahead.
Van Son
described Desertec as a "win-win" for both Europe and MENA, adding
that the Arab spring had created both opportunities and "questions"
for the ambitious project. Discussions are already underway with the Tunisian
government about building a solar farm, he said, and Algeria is the next
"obvious" country, due to its close proximity to western Europe's
grid. Countries such as Libya, Egypt, Turkey, Syria and Saudi Arabia are predicted
to start joining the network from 2020, as a network of high voltage direct
current cables are built and extended across the wider region.
German
companies and policy-makers have dominated the Dii conference, reflecting the
nation's recent decision to totally phase out nuclear power by 2022 in
reaction, in part, to the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in March. By
comparison, not a single representative from the UK was at the conference.
Jochen
Homann, the state secretary at Germany's Federal Ministry for Economics and
Technology, told the conference: "We undertook major reforms in German
energy policy this summer and Desertec opens up an opportunity for us. We want
to enter the age of renewables with sustainable sources of electricity
supplying 80% of our power generation by 2050. As we accelerate our phase-out
of nuclear power, we need to safeguard an affordable supply of electricity and
we will be interested in importing renewables supplies in the future. Germany's
government will continue to support Desertec. It is an inspiring vision which
is good for foreign, climate and economic policies."
But Homann
stressed there would be "pre-conditions" for guaranteeing long-term
support from the Germany government. He said there must be
"liberalisation" of the energy markets across the MENA region:
"North Africa still provides huge subsidies for fossil fuels. There will
need to be regulatory improvements. Only then will renewables be able to
compete and a common market created. And other European states must participate,
too."
Hassan
Younes, Egypt's minister of electricity and energy, told the conference that
Egypt was keen to participate and that it hoped to have a 1,000MW wind farm
built by 2016 in the Gulf of Suez, adding to the 150MW "hybrid"
gas/solar power plant that opened 100km south of Cairo earlier this year.
The
conference was told via a Dii promotional video that the network of solar and
wind farms across the MENA region would help to "halt migration" into
Europe, by fast-tracking the rise of the region's youthful population out of
poverty and unemployment.
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