Recent events do not seem to bode well for Desertec, the ambitious plan to ship CSP from North Africa and the Middle East to Europe.

First of all, there is the fact that two of the major industrial backers behind the project, Bosch and Siemens, last year pulled out of the Desertec Industrial Initiative (Dii), a private industrial consortium aiming to fulfil Desertec’s vision in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.

Siemens, one of 13 founding shareholders of Dii, announced its retirement last October, a day after officially bowing out of the solar business. Given the company’s exit from CSP, the departure was not unexpected, and the company claimed it would continue to stay connected.

But the next month Bosch left Dii too, citing ‘economic conditions’. “With a projected budget of €400 billion (USD$508 billion), the plan has been dismissed as too expensive, too risky and too big,” speculated Reuters.

That riskiness has not lessened any following developments in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

While tensions continue in Syria, limiting the scope for interconnections between the Middle East and Europe, attempts to quell al Qaeda-linked troubles in Mali, on the border with Algeria, a Dii focus country, have been qualified as a potential Vietnam by a former UK Cabinet minister.

And it is not just troublesome MENA countries that could upset the Desertec vision.

Last November Bloomberg reported that Spain was holding up the signing an agreement allowing the Moroccan Agency for Solar Energy to build a 150MW solar plant and export power to Europe, via a link crossing Spanish soil. Does this mean Desertec is on the ropes?

Renewable energy enablers

Not at all, responds Dii’s managing director, Paul van Son. “We are enablers for a renewable energy market at the system level in North Africa, the Middle East and Europe. We clearly see the need for affordable and clean energy has not diminished,” he says.

“You could almost say this must be done or it may ultimately lead to a major catastrophe. That is our driving argument and our driving force.”

In a major project such as this, he says, setbacks are to be expected. But Dii is nevertheless making significant progress in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, and has recently signed a memorandum of understanding with the Egyptian State Authority for New & Renewable Energy.

If anything, van Son adds, the flowering of the Arab Spring has led to a greater appetite for renewable energy generation in the region.

Meanwhile, “at the European level, nothing has changed,” he observes, with Germany continuing to signal support for Europe-wide infrastructure projects that can facilitate the widespread integration of renewable energy into the grid.

At the same time, Dii has broadened its vision beyond CSP and is now more actively seeking to incorporate other energy sources into its plans.

Working with the Fraunhofer Institute and others, the organisation has studied the potential not just of solar, wind, biomass and hydropower, but even the role that could be played by nuclear, coal or carbon-capture-and-storage technologies.

Gus Shellekens, director of the sustainability and climate change team at PricewaterhouseCoopers, a Desertec Foundation partner, agrees the concept still has a lot to offer. “It depends what you are expecting them to do, at the end of the day,” he says.

“There has always been an expectation they will deliver projects and we will see practical manifestations of the vision being developed by Desertec. I don’t think that would ever be the intention.”

Broad ambitions

Desertec’s three broad ambitions, he recalls, are to provide new studies and insights into the regions involved, to work with governments on improving the policy landscape, and finally to provide guidance to the market about the best ways to move forward.

“There was also a fourth expectation, from the outside, which is: why didn’t they go ahead and deliver these projects as well? But they have never really had that as a former part of their remit,” Shellekens says.

In any event, he adds, Dii has started moving forward with reference projects in places such as Morocco, to test some of the assumptions that have been thrown up reports.

Time will tell whether these ultimately lead to the grand vision Desertec aspires to, but in the meantime the concept of building continent-sized interconnections to share renewable energy is catching on elsewhere.

Michael Strauß, spokesperson for the Desertec Foundation, says: “Desertec can be implemented not only in the Mediterranean region but also in Asia, Southern and Northern America, and so on.

“In the Mediterranean we formed the Industrial Initiative and in other regions we are making partnerships, for example with the Japanese Renewable Energy Foundation.”

The Foundation’s new director, Ignacio Campino, hails from Chile, Strauß adds, and is interested in bringing the concept to the Atacama Desert region. As one Desertec insider confirms: “We are alive and well.”

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