Who’dathunk we might someday be importing veggies from Kuwait?   The funny thing is it makes perfect sense.  As the report below explains, we can add one more brilliant idea to the coming new age of renewable energy:  solar power can desalinate sea water and at the same time help provide nutrients which when added to that water can make greenhouse farms in the desert viable.  It’s not any crazier than Abu Dhabi’s plan to generate solar power and transmit it via underwater cable to Europe - thus becoming an exporter of electricity as well as oil.  It actually makes perfect sense.   I have to say that if the Middle Eastern desert denizens are smart - and we know some of them are very smart - and if they can get themselves organized to do it, their post-petroleum solar-based  economies could be even more dynamic than their current ones that are being fueled by liquid gold. 

Solar Powered Desalination Farm to Bring Life to the Sahara

on 02 September 2008, 12:02
by mark selfe

It was the Greek philosopher Plato who first coined the phrase ‘necessity is the mother of invention’ and given the current global food shortage and ever increasing population trend, his old adage could never be more appropriately illustrated than with the latest plan to bring life to the barren sands of the Sahara.

The ingenious plan, known as the Sahara Forest Project is simple: combine huge greenhouses with concentrated solar power (CSP) and plain old seawater. The solar power provides electricity for the farm of greenhouses, the desalination of the seawater provides both the freshwater and cooling required to grow a wide variety of crops.

One of the benefits of using the Seawater Greenhouse, invented by Chris Paton, is that it doesn’t draw water from the ever diminishing freshwater table and since we have an abundance of seawater across the globe it could potentially turn the most arid, inhospitable and usually poor regions of the planet into rich farming areas.
The Seawater Greenhouses already produce lettuces, peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes. The nutrients to grow the crops could come from local seaweed or even be extracted from the seawater itself.
There is already interest in funding demonstration projects from across the Middle East, including UAE, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait. The cost is not as astronomical as one would think, and is estimated at approximately $118 million for a 20 hectare site of greenhouses and a 10MW concentrated solar power farm.
The initiative to harness the sun’s power with the North Africa solar plan has already gained support in Europe from both the UK’s Gordon Brown and French premier Nikolas Sarkozy and though expensive to set up, $150 billion, investing in the infrastructure, as government’s have previously for oil, coal and nuclear could be more than worthwhile in the long term. According to the International Energy Agency $45 trillion will be needed in investment to develop new energy systems over the next 30 years.

Still, with oil, freshwater and food rapidly running out and certainly becoming more expensive, some of these creative energy schemes start to look more viable and not just off-the-wall ‘alternative’ ideas cooked up by the anti-big oil brigade.

Tags: peak oil energy investments

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 6th, 2008 at 12:29 pm and is filed under Oil and Food, concentrating solar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.