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The Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation (TREC) is an initiative of The Club of Rome, the Hamburg Climate Protection Foundation and the National Energy Research Center of Jordan (NERC) in the field of renewable forms of energy.

The core of TREC is an international network of scientists, politicians and other experts in the field of renewable forms of energy and their development. The members of TREC (nearly 50 in number, including His Royal Highness Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan) are in regular contact with national governments and with private investors, aiming to communicate the benefits that may be obtained from the cooperative use of solar energy and wind energy, and developing concepts and promoting specific projects in this field.

Since it was founded in 2003, it has developed the DESERTEC Concept for energy, water and climate security in EUrope, the Middle East and North Africa (EU-MENA), promoting cooperation between countries of the sun-belt and the technology belt. Now TREC is making this concept a reality in cooperation with people in politics, industry and the world of finance. The DESERTEC Concept of TREC is to boost the generation of electricity and desalinated water by solar thermal power plants and wind turbines in MENA and to transmit the clean electrical power via High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) transmission lines throughout those areas and as from 2020 (with overall just 10-15% transmission losses) to Europe.

The Situation

On the one hand it's certain that by the middle of the 21st century, humanity will have used up a majority of the fossil fuel resources available on Earth (with the exception of coal) to meet the demands of power plants and vehicles (see also Peak Oil). A noticeable reduction in worldwide demands for fossil fuels is not in sight, although such a reduction is essential to contain the threat of Global Warming. And on the other hand it's also certain, that even if there was a small reduction in demand, this would merely postpone the day when fossil fuels run out.

Consequently only a shift to renewable forms of energy can be a long-term solution to looming problems of energy shortages and damage to the environment. Even though there is great potential in the European continent for wind, hydro, geothermal and solar power, the utilization of these sources of energy has a range of limitations in Europe, densely populated as it is. When the renewable sources of Europe and The Middle East/North-Africa were combined, the EU-MENA region would be in a much improved position to shift to clean and secure energy rapidly and economically.

Two Reports by DLR

TREC was founded with the goal of providing clean energy for Europe and for sunbelt countries quickly and economically through a cooperation between the countries of EUrope, the Middle East and North Africa (short: EU-MENA). Power from deserts, as a supplement to European sources of renewable energy, can speed up the process of cutting European emissions of CO2 and it can help to increase the security of European energy supplies. At the same time, it can provide jobs, earnings, drinking water and an improved infrastructure for people in MENA.

TREC has been involved in the conduct of two studies which have evaluated the potential of renewables in MENA, the expected needs for water and power in EU-MENA between now and 2050 and the potential for a electricity transmission grid connecting the EU with MENA (a EU-MENA-Connection). Those two studies were commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conversation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) and have been conducted by the German Aerospace Center (DLR). The ‘MED-CSP’ study was produced in 2005 and the ‘TRANS-CSP’ study was completed in 2006. An AQUA-CSP’ study about the needs, the potential and the consequences of solar desalination in MENA is in progress. Most of the following statements refer to those studies (see external links too).

The DESERTEC Concept

Satellite-based studies by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) have shown that, using less than 0.3% of the entire desert areas of the MENA region, solar thermal power plants can generate enough electricity and fresh water to supply current demands in EU-MENA, and anticipated increases in those demands in the future. Harnessing the winds in Morocco and on land around the Red Sea would generate additional supplies of electricity. Solar and wind power can be distributed in MENA and transmitted via High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) transmission lines to Europe with transmission losses that would be no more than 10-15%. The Club of Rome and TREC are both pursuing this DESERTEC concept: bringing technology and deserts into service for energy, water and climate security. Countries like Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia have already shown an interest in this kind of cooperation.

The Technology

The best solar power technology for providing secure power output is Solar Thermal Power Plants (also called Concentrating Solar Thermal Power, CSP). They use mirrors to concentrate sunlight and create heat which is used to raise steam to drive steam turbines and electricity generators. Excess heat from additional collectors can be stored in tanks of molten salt and used to power steam turbines during the night or when there is a peak in demand. In order to ensure uninterrupted service during overcast periods or bad weather (without the need for expensive backup plants), the turbines can also be powered by oil, natural gas or biomass fuels. Waste heat from the power-generation process may be used (in cogeneration) to desalinate seawater and to generate thermal cooling – useful by-products that can be a great benefit to the local population.

Using High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) transmission lines, loss of power during transmission can be limited to only about 3% per 1000 km. The high solar radiation in the deserts of MENA (twice that in Southern Europe), outweighs by far the 10-15% transmission losses between MENA and Europe. This means that solar thermal power plants in the deserts of MENA are more economic than the same kinds of plants in Southern Europe. Although hydrogen has in the past been proposed as an energy vector, this form of transmission is very much less efficient than HVDC transmission lines.

Security of Supply

Imports of fuels such as uranium, natural gas and oil are considered to be politically risky since global reserves are shrinking inexorably and known reserves are found in only a few countries. This is leading to higher prices, to political dependencies and to limits on supplies. By contrast, solar power is plentiful, inexhaustible and available in many countries. And as volumes increase, costs will fall and the technologies will improve. Increasing power supplies to Europe will lead to more business opportunities for the MENA countries. This in turn may help to increase political stability and improve relations between Europe and MENA. Too large a dependence on one country and on only a few power plants can be avoided by diversifying the range of sources of renewable energy, as illustrated by the figures showing large numbers of solar thermal power plants and wind farms in many countries. Likewise, the use of several different HVDC transmission lines to Europe and a wide range of different owners of facilities (both public and private) will help to increase security of supply.

By 2050, between 10-25% of Europe’s electricity may be clean power that is imported from sunny deserts. In the TRANS-CSP scenario, domestic renewables comprise about 65% of European supplies, while solar imports from MENA provide a further 18%. International trade in renewable energy will tend to increase the number of inexpensive sources of electricity and should help to strengthen international cooperation. New jobs in the MENA region would be created during the construction of power plants, in the maintenance of those plants, and in the generation of electricity and water for local people. There is also the possibility of generating hydrogen (as a possible substitute for fossil fuels for transport) using inexpensive and inexhaustible supplies of solar energy. Furthermore there would be a reduced demand for biomass to generate electricity, so it could be used to a greater extent for transport.

The Feasibility

The technologies that are needed to realise the DESERTEC concept are already developed and some of them have been in use for decades. HVDC transmission lines up to 1.5 GW capacity have been deployed over long distances by ABB and Siemens for many years. If it is necessary to transmit more power, then more than one line can be used. At the World Energy Dialogue 2006 in Hanover speakers from both the companies just mentioned have confirmed that the implementation of a Euro-Supergrid and a EU-MENA-Connection is, technically, entirely feasible.

Solar thermal power plants have been in use commercially at Kramer Junction in California since 1985. New solar thermal power plants with a total capacity of more than 2000 MW are either planned, under construction, or already in operation. The DLR has calculated that, if solar thermal power plants were to be constructed in large numbers in the coming years, the estimated cost will come down from 9-22 EuroCent/kWh to about 4-5 EuroCent/kWh.

In order to establish, by 2050, a capacity of 100 GW of exportable solar power in MENA, over and above the domestic needs of sun-belt countries, only a few governmental supporting measures would be sufficient to make the construction of the power plants and the necessary transmission grid more attractive to investors, both private and public. An exact investment forecast for the TRANS-CSP scenario has been researched by the DLR (graphic on the right).

Measures to implement the DESERTEC Concept

Construction of new solar thermal power plants already has begun in Spain and in the USA (Andasol 1 & 2, Solar Tres, PS10, Nevada Solar One). Projects are in progress in Algeria, Egypt and Morocco and further plants are planned in Jordan and Libya. Morocco has implemented a feed-in law to support renewables (wind in particular). Discussions about the construction of a HVDC-Supergrid across Europe (a Euro-Supergrid) have started in the EU and plans for offshore wind farms are taking shape.

To boost the construction of solar thermal power plants and wind turbines in MENA, the EU should support a campaign to inform MENA governments that, over the lifetime of those plants, they would be a cheaper source of power than electricity generated from oil or natural gas. This would reduce the domestic use of fossil fuels (which are continuing to increase in price) and, at the same time, it would enable the sun-belt countries to produce clean power from their own deserts for local use and for export.

While solar thermal power plants already work economically in MENA countries, further reductions in costs would be necessary to make CSP a profitable export option from MENA. Growth in the construction of those plants and EU support for the Euro-Supergrid with a EU-MENA-Connection will help to drive down costs in the period up to 2020. Towards that goal, it would be useful if the EU would provide advice and support for the possible introduction of feed-in regulations in MENA countries along the lines of the German and Spanish Renewable Energy Laws. International guarantees for the local feed-in contracts or power supply agreements would help to boost the construction of solar plants and wind turbines.

It is very important that talks begin soon on the development of the proposed Euro-Supergrid with a EU-MENA-Connection. This would facilitate the optimal integration of all renewable sources of energy from Europe with renewables from MENA. In itself, the initiation of the EU-MENA-Connection for the transmission of clean power from deserts to Europe would create a boom of investments in renewable sources of energy in MENA countries and would give Europe access to cheap, and clean and inexhaustible electricity. The construction of HVDC grids for the first 10 GW, as described in the TRANS-CSP scenario, would cost about 5 billion Euros. If the EU-MENA-Connection is to start transmission by 2020, talks within the EU and with the governments of MENA (perhaps in the Barcelona Process) must begin as soon as possible.

In the period up to 2050, a total of about 45 billion Euros must be invested into the EU-MENA-Connection. By 2050, cheap power from deserts could produce as much as 10 billion Euros of savings each year which may be compared with ‘Estimated future electricity costs’ in the accompanying chart. This is equivalent to a return on investment of about 20%. We may conclude that the EU-MENA-Connection is likely to be profitable for the participating states.

In addition to these direct supporting measures, TREC proposes two projects to help bring down the cost of CSP and to alleviate pressing social and political problems at the same time. Both projects are technically possible, but require financial and political support:

• Gaza Solar Power and Water Project: Solar Power & Water Project: To build CSP plants for the combined generation of electricity (1 GW in total) and desalination of sea water. These plants, part of a potential international recovery programme for Gaza, could be located in the Egyptian Sinai coastal region. With the provision of appropriate water and power lines into the Gaza strip, these facilities could provide supplies for 2-3 Million people. This project could mark a turning point in the currently disastrous social and economic development of Gaza, in the regional conflicts for water and in the stalled peace process between Israel and Palestine. The total investment required would be about 5 billion Euros.

• San‘a’ Solar Water Project: To build desalination and power plants near the Red Sea for the Yemenite Capital Sana’a which is facing the exhaustion of its ground water reserves in about 15 years. These plants, powered by solar energy, would generate fresh water for Sana’a and, at the same time, would produce the power needed to pump the fresh water through a pipeline to the city of Sana’a at an altitude of 2200 meters. This Sana’a project could avoid a looming humanitarian disaster and social unrest in Yemen, and would save a cultural heritage of world-wide significance. Moving 2 million people from Sana’a to new settlements would cost about 30 billion Euros. This is very much more expensive than the 5 billion Euros needed for the alternative plan: to let people to stay in Sana’a and build solar power plants and a pipeline to supply them with water.

By the middle of the 21st century, the MENA countries could have upgraded their deserts to inexhaustible sources of clean energy and sell clean power to European countries, thus contributing to bring down European emissions of greenhouse gases to a sustainable level. In the scenario described in reports from the DLR, it will be possible to cut emissions of CO2 from electricity generation by 70% and phase out nuclear power at the same time – with decreasing electricity costs in the long-term.

Criticism

Importing electricity contains a political risk as soon as the quota exceeds a certain level. Furthermore the political barriers are high, because for a realisation of the concept a cooperation between the states of Europe (France prefers nuclear power generation) and the states of the MENA-region would be necessary.

A realisation of the concept would be rather easier inside one national confederation (e.g. Australia or the USA). Indeed the peak scientific body in Australia, the CSIRO, has said Australia's national electricity grid could be fully powered from solar-thermal power by 2020, and solar-thermal power stations in southern California have shown their viability over the past 15 years, such that neighbouring states of New Mexico, Nevada and Arizona are adopting similar technology.

Notes and References

1. Homepage of TREC (The whole contents of this website are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 License.)

• Study on MED-CSP – Study of the DLR for BMU from 2005
• Study TRANS-CSP on an Intercontinental Transfer of Solar Energy – A DLR Study for the BMU from 2006
• Download of a report of Greenpeace: Concentrated Solar Thermal Power - Now! (PDF, 1,3 MB)
• Download of a Memorandum about the potential of solar power plants (PDF, 1,4 MB)

External links

• The Homepage of TREC
• The German Association Club of Rome
• The Hamburg Climate Protection Foundation (HKF)
• TREC-UK

• Sigmar Gabriel, German Federal Minister for the Environment, calls the idea of the DESERTEC Concept as "ground-breaking" and campaigns for it in his opening speech to the Ministerial Conference under the German Presidency of the EU (at PDF Page 5 & 6), 19.04.2007
• German Parliamentary State Secretary of the Federal Ministery for the Environment (BMU) Michael Müller mentioned TREC his speech to the European Conference "Integrating Environment, Development and Conflict Prevention" in a very complaisant way and campaigns for TREC's "Gaza Solar Water & Power Project" (in Part III), 29.03.2007
• Guardian Unlimited, 2006-11-27, "How mirrors can light up the world"
• United Press International, 2006-10-27, “Sun cheaper than Oil”
• Solarserver.de, 2006-10-16, German Politicians claim: “Clean Power from the Deserts”

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