The Drunk Diplomat

An important article this Sunday caught my eye in the NY Times. Europe is beginning to grapple with the carbon limits it imposed upon itself by building a massive solar power plant in Morocco. The plant will transmit clean, renewable, solar energy through an advanced electric grid to Europe. It will be the largest solar plant of its kind in a region that receives vast amounts of sun light. Building a solar plant of this scale would not be practical in Europe because the strength of sunlight hitting Europe is weaker, therefore, the solar plant would be less efficient than one located in the Moroccan desert. Furthermore, land is cheaper and the population is vastly less dense in Morocco. There is a bevy of international organizations working together including: TREC, the Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation; Eumena, or European Union, the Mediterranean and North Africa; the Union of the Mediterranean; and the Club of Rome.

This experiment will hopefully become a model for international cooperation on the use of solar power in the most efficient areas (areas that receive the most sunlight) and then transmitted to the more densely populated areas. By 2050 Europe can be completely powered by solar energy from North Africa and the Middle East. However, the catch to this would be an almost complete dependence on North Africa for energy. Replacing one source of power: oil and gas – supplied from the Middle East and Russia with another source: Solar energy supplied from North Africa. Actually increasing Europe’s reliance on Islamic and autocratic governments for its energy, rather than decreasing it. However, there are two relatively radical ideas that I would suggest to solve this problem.

1) The Possible Addition of North African Countries to the EU.
2) A Euro-North African-West Asian Power grid
3) In addition to large thermal energy power plants, millions of small photovoltaic solar panels on houses, businesses, etc.

Obviously the first two ideas are extremely far fetched in 2009, the third idea is already happening to some extent in Germany, but not nearly fast enough or extensive enough across Europe. Europe and North Africa already have a framework of cooperation in the EuroMediterranean Partnership, but the partnership was created to promote peace, stability, and economic opportunity – not the development of a common energy relationship. Don’t get me wrong – there are ways to create a power system that could exist outside of the EU, but to calm European fears about North Africa hypothetically producing the vast majority of its energy a very close partnership would have to exist, and I believe that “EU” membership would enhance not only energy cooperation between Europe and N. Africa, but social development, economic development, and create perpetual peace in the Mediterranean region. EU membership would also allay fears in North Africa that the Europeans are colonizing vast tracks of their land again for solar power plants, considering the vast majority of investment would be European. Geographically this relationship just makes sense. Europe has vast population centers demanding energy, N. Africa has vast deserts teeming with the possibility of unlimited solar energy. The only foreseeable impediment’s are transmission, cultural fears, and initial investment costs. These are large, possibly politically impossible impediments, but I’m an optimist.

What I would love to see is the United States lead the way by creating numerous thermal solar plants in the Southwest U.S. and Northwest Mexico. Similar problems exist for the U.S.; transmission, and initial investment are the biggest, but I would like to see a power sharing grid that spans the North American continent to reduce redundancy.

Nuclear energy, wind energy, and geothermal energy (and frankly coal and natural gas plants if they’re clean) could be used to supplement the mainly solar power charged grid to compensate for night, and clouds, as well as, smaller solar photovoltaic panels on cars, buildings, etc. around the country. A grid like this would almost completely reduce European and North American reliance on fossil fuels and the unstable regimes that peddle them like drugs. A massive alternative energy power grid would put the liberal democratic states on much more solid footing at home and abroad.

Source:
Europe Looks to Africa for Solar Power
TOM ZELLER Jr.
NY Times June 21, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/business/energy-environment/22iht-green22.html?ref=world