Sahara sun power plan loses steam

I actually had high hopes for this plan as a long-range way to deal with an area that is only going to have more and more energy demand.  The idea was to use a large area of the Sahara Desert to generate solar power (there is certainly a decent amount of consistent sunlight there), and transmit it under the Mediterranean to power-hungry, but want-to-be-green Europe.   And they could even grow crops under the solar panels or something like that.

Well, all is not sunny for this plan right now.

Siemens pulls out of DESERTEC project

Here are a couple of excerpts.  I would say that there is still some chance that this project could be implemented at some level.

1. Siemens also said that it will pull out of the solar-energy business altogether. Its decision was made in response to falling government subsidies for solar energy and a collapse in the price of solar equipment. But to DESERTEC’S critics, Siemens’ exit also adds to doubts about the plan, which is expected to cost hundreds of billions of dollars. “DESERTEC is an ambitious attempt to do every­thing at once,” says Jenny Chase, an analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance in Zurich, Switzerland. “I think it’s something that will be achieved organically, bit by bit, which will probably be cheaper, easier and achieve the same results.”

2. But Thiemo Gropp, director of the non-profit DESERTEC Foundation that set up Dii, says the fall in costs that drove Siemens out of the business will ultimately benefit the project. “Other companies will fill this gap with their own products,” he says. DESERTEC has endorsed one such project, a solar thermal plant planned for a site in Tunisia. Nur Energie, the London-based company behind the undertaking, hopes to supply Italy with power from the plant through an underwater cable.