[amor de cosmos]

Nature | News
Sahara solar plan loses its shine
Siemens’ decision to pull out of DESERTEC reignites doubts.
Devin Powell
31 October 2012

Dimming prospects for solar energy have caught up with a massive renewable-energy project planned for the Sahara Desert. By 2050, according to its backers, DESERTEC, a network of solar plants and other renewable sources scattered across North Africa and the Middle East, could generate more than 125 gigawatts of power that could be used locally or delivered to Europe through high-voltage direct-current cables beneath the Mediterranean Sea. But one of its major backers, Siemens, based in Munich, Germany, now says that it will leave Dii, the consortium trying to advance DESERTEC, by the end of the year.

“We see our part in Dii as done,” says spokesman Torsten Wolf of Siemens, one of 13 founding partners of the consortium, which is also based in Munich.

Siemens also said that it will pull out of the solar-energy business altogether. Its decision was made in response to falling government subsidies for solar energy and a collapse in the price of solar equipment. But to DESERTEC’S critics, Siemens’ exit also adds to doubts about the plan, which is expected to cost hundreds of billions of dollars. “DESERTEC is an ambitious attempt to do every­thing at once,” says Jenny Chase, an analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance in Zurich, Switzerland. “I think it’s something that will be achieved organically, bit by bit, which will probably be cheaper, easier and achieve the same results.”

http://www.nature.com/news/sahara-so...-shine-1.11684