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Desertec to bring Saharan Solar Power to Europe, or Africa?

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The all-ambitious Saharan Solar Power Project i.e. Desertec Industrial Initiative (DII) has been debated over for quite a while now on some perceptible points. Is it possible to illumine Europe via African solar power or is it yet another flight of human fancy? To put such suppositions to rest or, maybe to spark up a new controversy, some heavyweight techno-giants, including German engineering company Siemens, German insurer Munich Re, Deutsche Bank, German utilities RWE and EON and Spain’s power company Abengoa gathered in Munich to augur the $555 billion project. Still, what I am apprehensive (sort of) about is the actual beneficiary.

Video after the jump:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXURvISjh2A&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

The Memo of Understanding:

Anyhow, Zurich’s electricity grid builder ABB, Algerian firm Cevital, European bank HSH Nordbank, engineering company M+W Zander, and solar firms Schott Solar and Solar Millennium were among the other partakers who signed the memo of understanding that says:

Among the [Desertec Industrial Initiative’s] main goals are the drafting of concrete business plans and associated financing concepts, and the initiating of industrial preparations for building a large number of networked solar thermal power plants distributed throughout the MENA region […] All of the DII’s activities will be aimed at developing viable investment plans within three years of its establishment.

Now, the memo itself provides ample food for misappropriation on the time limit. Previously, the project was reported to take 40 years for completion i.e. the year 2050, and now it says that they’ll develop viable investment plans within three years.

Europe is not the only recipient:
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I doubt if it is Europe since Fritz Vahrenholt, chief executive of RWE AG’s (RWE.XE) renewable energy unit RWE Innogy raises similar doubts. He says that Desertec aims at generating power for the African countries. Moreover, the Desertec concept focuses on a sustainable and continuous electric supply for Europe (EU), the Middle East (ME) and North Africa.

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