Desertec Pt.2: What About Africa Below The Desert?

And what of Africa below the Desert?

The FAQ on Desertec’s site is clear about the geographical scope of the project: Europe, Middle East and North Africa.

Your approach includes only North Africa. What about the rest of Africa and other countries?

• For a cooperation and integration into the European grid, MENA is – because of its proximity to Europe – obviously more suitable, than Central or South Africa
• Renewables in general and CSP in particular, are also suitable for the rest of Africa and it will profit by the cost reductions developed in the north.
• Central Africa has large hydropower resources considered by the North African countries (eg. Egypt) as a strategic reserve for its electricity supply. If North Africa, however, uses its own solar resources, Central Africa remains its most important resource.
• We also campaign there and in China, Australia, America and India for a realisation of DESERTEC “Clean Power from Deserts,” but our resources are limited.
• That is why we are founding regional DESERTEC Networks, which can benefit from our know-how and the studies.

So, Desertec is a commercial deal between the Western European energy giants, who want to capitalize on CSP technology, and the leaders of MENA countries, who have vast desert lands in close proximity to the European power grids.

It would be naive for the excluded African countries to expect Desertec to consider countries too far away to be of use for their primary goal of adding MENA desert energy to their existing stocks.

Fortunately, most of the continent enjoys solar radiation levels suited to CSP technology. The energy potential remains the same without Desertec. However, if we want to explore CSP technology, we have to court other CSP partners willing to make their profit through the sale of know-how, or co-ownership of African energy companies.

Do such partners exist? Yes, the  Medium and Small Scale Concentrated Solar Thermal Power Platform is one example.

The idea of Africa South of the Sahara as an unprofitable area of operation – as implied by Desertec – is a fallacy. One need only look at the enormous profits and growth mobile telecommunication companies have experienced in the region. Their success lies in having jumped in where state-operated landline systems had failed, leaving a poulace willing to pay any price to communicate. The same situation prevails now in the field of electrical power.

What are our options?

The most important thing to do is not to be drawn into technology wars (PV-technology vs. CSP). We are simply not equipped to make an imprint there. The African strategy should hinge on two points:

1. Catch up with PV-technology and equip the common man so that we can reap the benefits of advances made in Europe, the USA and Asia;

2. Work with positively inclined CSP developers and entrepreneurs who are amenable to investing in Africa South of The Sahara. Emphasis should be to decentralize and reduce dependence on long, vulnerable power transportation lines as envisioned by Desertec. The reason why we should apply the technology at small to medium scale should be obvious: we do not have the massive capital or intra-national grid cohesion that is needed for that setup.

Challenge number one is to get our policy-makers to take solar more seriously than they have done to date.

Desertec represents the second phase a solar revolution that Africa has practically missed out on. In the past decade, in what we could term Phase 1, the USA, Europe and parts of Asia have adopted PV based solar energy so well that it is no longer a curious conservationists’ concept. In three years or so, grid-parity will be achieved, a point at which PV power pricing equals or falls under grid-power.

One thing is clear. If we allow Desertec to take off without us, we will see Africa split in two by energy and progress, and people driven yet farther towards the margins of the global economy because they failed to use their solar resource transform their energy supplies.

For further reading a discussion on the technology and possibilities of CSP, I recommend the Desertec-Africa site.