newjerseynewsroom.com

BY JULIO GODOY

IPS NEWS AGENCY

BERLIN — Twelve German companies have drawn up ambitious plans to meet at least 15 percent of the European electricity demand by 2020 from solar thermal power plants installed in the North African Maghreb region.

The companies — including Germany's largest private bank Deutsche Bank, the electronic giant Siemens, the leading insurance company Muenchener Rueck, and the biggest German power companies E.on and RWE — are planning to invest some 400 billion euros ($560 billion) in installation, and on modifying the European electricity grid to receive electricity across the Mediterranean Sea.

The solar thermal power plants (STPPs) would also feed North African energy demands. The plan has been drawn up following studies by the Club of Rome, an independent development group, and the German Aerospace Centre (DLR), a state-owned research institute.

"We want to launch an economic joint venture and lay concrete plans for Desertec in the next two to three years," Torsten Jeworrek, director of Muenchener Rueck told IPS.

"Clean solar energy is exactly the future of Siemens," Peter Loescher, CEO of Siemens, said at a press conference in Munich last month. "Our company, and the whole economy, will be greener after the (present economic) crisis." Loescher said Siemens will "participate intensively" in Desertec.

"Environmental catastrophes provoked by climate change constitute in the long term a problem larger than the present financial crisis," Jeworrek told IPS. "Our own statistics over the last decades show that insurance claims caused by environmental catastrophes and climate change are growing three to four percent per year."

According to estimates by German energy experts, solar electricity generated in North Africa could cost about 0.06 euros per kilowatt-hour (kWh). The production cost from other sources at present ranges between 0.025 and 0.05 euros.

"Practically all experts agree that electricity prices will rise in the coming years," Bernd Schuessler from the German energy journal Photon told IPS.

According to estimates by DLR and the Club of Rome, the Desertec investment of 400 billion euros can bring an installed capacity of 100 gigawatts by 2050.

By comparison, the Olkiluoto 3 nuclear power plant under construction in Finland, with an installed capacity of 1.6 gigawatts, will cost 5 billion euros. And this does not include the cost of managing radioactive waste or of handling other technical difficulties at the plant.

The estimated cost for the STPPs in the Maghreb include installation of high- performance power lines through the Mediterranean Sea to transport electricity to Europe. According to the DLR, "over distances above about 500 to 600 km, underground power cables only cost about 10 to 20 percent more than overhead power lines...(and) do not emit any electromagnetic radiation."

Several environmental activists have welcomed Desertec. "This project is one of the most intelligent answers to the global environmental and economic problems of our time," Andree Boehling, energy expert at Greenpeace, told IPS.

"It seems as though an important fraction of the German business class has realized that it is about time to expand the use of renewable energy resources and to say farewell to fossil fuels and to nuclear power plants."

German minister for the environment Sigmar Gabriel says the project is an "excellent idea, both as part of the European energy policy as well as a development program for the North African countries."

Solar thermal power plants, which have been in use commercially since 1985, use mirrors and magnifying lenses to concentrate solar energy to raise steam to feed turbines and generate electricity.

According to a report by the Club of Rome, "an interesting by-product that can be a great benefit to the local population in desert regions is that waste heat from the power-generation process can be used to desalinate seawater.