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Contributions from
the Column
Focus
“Sustainable energy is often the
most cost-effective”
Dealing with five challenges
Solar and wind power from the Sahara
Fossilised minds and climate change
“The Hydrogen economy is a long-term vision”
Renewable energies offer the only chance
5/2004
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[ Mediterranean future ]
Solar and wind power from the Sahara
The acronym TREC stands for “Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation”. This is the name of a particularly ambitious project to be presented at the International Conference for Renewable Energies Bonn 2004. The initiators intend to base the energy supply for Europe, Northern Africa and the Middle East almost completely on renewable sources. For this climate-friendly purpose, they want to link up the area around the Mediterranean with high tension lines and create grand new power plants. The Club of Rome and the Hamburg Climate Protection Foundation have developed the concept in co-operation with experts from Northern Africa and the Middle East. According to them, it is technically feasible and economically viable without exorbitant subsidies.
Obviously, there is plenty of sunshine in the Sahara and on the Arabian peninsula. A significant part of TREC would consist in solar thermal power plants. These use mirrors to focus the sun’s rays and use the heat to generate power. The second main arm would be wind energy. TREC’s promoters see favourable conditions in North Africa and the Middle East for this too, for instance, because the trade winds are particularly constant. Experts emphasise that the supply network would be spread so wide that it would ensure that regional weather fluctuations would be evened out.
Surplus capacity could also be used to produce hydrogen. This would offer an innovative opportunity for storing energy. Hydro-electric plants in Europe’s mountain regions such as the Alps would be a further storage possibility. Surplus power would be used to pump water in the reservoirs above the turbines.
TREC engineers refer to further positive aspects of their plan. For example, solar energy can be usefully connected with desalination plants to get drinking water from the Mediterranean. Furthermore, the supply and maintenance of the modern infrastructure in North Africa and the Middle East would create new jobs and income opportunities. On top of this, even the initial stages of setting up TREC would serve as reference projects and encourage exports to other areas of the world. All of this would be based on technologies, which have been developed mainly in Europe.
However, implementing TREC will not be easy from a political point of view. According to the initiators it will be necessary, firstly, to have a joint energy market for the countries involved from the North Cape to the Persian Gulf. Secondly, an integrated infrastructure would have to link all countries involved in the project. There is no doubt about it: meeting both of these requirements is a very ambitious goal. (dem)
TREC-Website:
http://www.trec-eumena.org/
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