I'm amazed by the NIMBYism for the middle of the desert. Yes it's not completely devoid of life and impact, but as far as places for generating solar power go, it's about as good as you're gonna get.
It's not NIMBYism because it's not my backyard. It's an attempt at environmentalism and cost-benefit calculations. It might turn out to be net positive, but you can't know that unless you consider the negatives first.
Its this kind of stuff that makes me think all the global warming hysteria must be overblown. If it were really as dire as environmentalists would have you believe, they wouldnt be fighting this kind of stuff (or nuclear).
The only real accomplishment the global warming people have achieved is to make energy much more expensive and energy supplies much more unstable (e.g. california, europe)
Most environmentalists surely have good intentions, but they (like most people) are not experts on climate science and those that are have conflicted interests. For academics, you can only get one answer or you are cast out and shunned as a big oil lackey. For activist groups like greenpeace etc they only raise money by being alarmist. And then some are simply motivated by the desire to hurt western economies.
Well, duh. I don't think anyone thinks "sun strong -> good for solar" is bad reasoning. What is bad reasoning is ending your analysis there.
What's the cost-benefit of installing heavy transmissions infrastructure for the desert? The shore? The sea and ocean? Everyone and everything who live there? How vulnerable is that infrastructure to natural and artificial disasters, and what costs do we bear to build resilience to those outcomes?
Aren't surrounding communities also in need of strong consistent power? Why not move the power less distance (far less materials, less power losses) and serve a different population?
The classic thought-terminating cliche of if we covered X% of the Sahara we could power the whole globe obviously ignores the act of moving that energy from one place to another, which is a huge endeavor, to say the least.
Your argument is basically of the flavor "why is California still in a drought while the Mississippi river rages?"
they would be better off finding a use for the power in Africa. It like they have to pipe it in from so far just to... have it worthwhile. smh terribly thought.
It always seems odd to me that countries are willing to go across international boundaries for such a vital part of the economy.
If they could just be self-sufficient with a load of nuclear power plants then they would have less political leverage problems
The UK in particular has a vast abundance of wind power off it's coasts. It makes more sense to double down with 22bn investment in wind!
These solar projects are good to start as they could empower more african nations with cheaper electricty. We just need more electricity everywhere if were going to drop the reliance on oil.
Some people don't like nuclear power plants and somehow that's more important to them than national/energy security.
UK (and France) already have the bomb; going renewable here rather than nuclear has nothing to do with proliferation. I don't see how (for the UK) it's anything except people's feelings are hurt by nuclear power plants.
For the rest of Europe maybe it's about proliferation. And maybe economies of scale make tagging along cheaper than local nuclear for Britain.
The UK has been valiantly trying to build new nuclear, but it's hard to find anybody that can do it, and it's unbelievably expensive if it even does get built.
I think that there was a narrow window in time where labor costs were low enough for nuclear to make sense, but in more advanced economies, highly labor intensive energy sources, as required by nuclear construction, are no longer viable. Advanced manufacturing capabilities have eclipsed construction technology.
> It always seems odd to me that countries are willing to go across international boundaries for such a vital part of the economy.
Versus going across international borders for most other aspects of their economy? if the UK stopped international trade it would completely collapse anyway.
I fully agree with nuclear fusion power plants, but there is so much free solar power that is currently being “wasted”.
Nuclear fusion reactors are many decades away and hopefully that’s when our global power problems will be (hopefully) solved :-)
This planned link is very long distance, but UK is still part of a European power grid: it's normal for power lines to cross national (or State) borders.
Impossible in capitalism or with modern politics, but I planning for failure makes a lot of sense to me, and I don't mind having a power grid support 2x capacity.
Same for food, medicine, and general-purpose manufacturing (e.g. machine shops), for that matter.
- "Most controversially, the two other sites mentioned by Bouaida — Mahbes and Lemsid — are in the neighboring disputed territory of Western Sahara, which Morocco has claimed as its own for almost half a century, in defiance of the UN, which does not recognize the claim and lists Western Sahara as a non-self-governing territory."
Absolute madness to lead the article with lessons learned from Russian energy dependence, and segue into "let's put our eggs into this civil war basket-case". Never mind the moral arguments of investing in power plants on illegally annexed territory with no sovereign government. As a practical matter: what happens when conflicts break out again, and the keys to your high-value industrial economy are in some third-world warzone?
I just visited Morocco. And I asked the tour driver about Western Sahara being a different country. He immediately said it is not a different country but Morocco.
Morocco ended up in the web of French and Spanish Colonialism. It lost some land during independence, some of which ended up in formerly French Algeria after the French left up. Western Sahara was one of those territories where the King of Morocco had 350k people march into the land and tell the colonialists of the Sahara whose land it really was.
It is just bonkers that the UN does not recognize Western Sahara that Morocco has exercised sovereignty over for so long as part of Morocco. It just feeds into the idea that the UN is nothing more than a central conglomerated vasal of colonialist rule.
It’s insane how these articles somehow conjure up some kind of nonsensical bad for environment arguments. Putting solar panels in the desert is good for the environment. It reduces the ground temperatures and lets more plants and animals survive. It might also slow down further desertification.
I see where you're coming from, and I agree that the arguments highlighted in the article are rather unconvincing, but messing up with ecosystems ALWAYS triggers unintended consequences. Some might be good, others terrible.
I wouldn't be as definitive about the "good" in it as you make it sound.
It ignores the fact that climate change is disproportionally going to affect Africa and that doing nothing does not mean the status quo remains for nomadic tribes.
It means more desertification, less grazing area and greater poverty.
> Putting solar panels in the desert is good for the environment.
This is categorically false. Solar panels actually increase the ambient temperature in the area [0]. Directly under a panel will be cooler, but those areas are 1. Heavily disturbed, with most the native plants an animals destroyed on installation and 2. Small compared to the total affected area.
Solar fields take up a large amount of space and installing a new one involves damaging a lot of native landscape.
Despite the drawbacks I think that solar is usually quite a bit better on net than the energy it's replacing, but we should still be clear about the costs and drawbacks.
It’s different, but hard to say if it’s better or worse globally. Dust from the Sahara plays a major role in cloud formation and transporting nutrients to the Amazon basin.
I doubt it would be significant for the Amazon in the short term, but it could mean less frequent but larger tropical storms in the mid Atlantic which then pound the east coast. Perhaps it’s a net good globally and just bad for America and the Caribbean, I don’t actually know.
However, these plans don’t actually involve that much land so the net effect is probably minimal compared to the gain from reducing natural gas useage.
Hasn't North Africa only been a desert for a few thousand years? It's not exactly some perfectly balanced ecosystem that has existed for a million years or something. Really, it turning to a desert was an ecosystem collapse... Second, Africa is HUGE. The amount of land they would be using for this must be minuscule compared to the area of this ecosystem. Third, not all ecosystems are equal.. The biodiversity of some areas is so much higher than others, it's not comparable. An acre of rain forest must be worth more than an acre of desert.
> Putting solar panels in the desert is good for the environment
Instead of altering unique grassland and desert ecosystems, and displacing nomadic tribes, the better option for 'the environment' and its peoples would be to build nuclear power plants.
Changing the natural state of the desert environment is good for the environment? the desert is full of plants and animals that are adapted to it already.
By definition, energy = transformation of the environment. The more energy we use, the more we transform our environment. Which most like isn't good for the environment, and eventually for us since we depend on this environment too.
According to NYTimes [1] Die Zeit [2] and Financial Times, a rogue billionaire with a yacht and a team of 6 people can blow up natural gas pipelines that were hardened under concrete.
So how on Earth do you expect to secure such a massive length of cable?
So if an adversary can cut off 8% of your energy just by blowing up the pipeline at any of its more vulnerable spots, what prevents them? Should we call this the Full Employment for the Royal Navy Act?
Ah yes, the Europeans stealing the African's photons. I wont say much as there are already so many comments. This proposed cable and the solar farms that would drive it are not going to be owned by the British government. They are not some extractive colonial endeavour. The African governments should tax the generation, re-invest the tax revenue, and build-out their local infrastructure. I'm aware of the resource curse. As I think Bob Geldof said once "the only thing Africa really needs is a better class of African leader".
I wonder when are we starting to lay cables across longitude so you get solar power when it's night time. Thinking this out loud now - lower night time loads get covered by wind and other renewables.
Overall I like this project. It's a win-win for both the UK and Morocco.
The only problem is the security of the cable. After Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and the blowup of the Nordstream pipelines, you can't take this security for granted. I think it would make more sense to ship liquefied hydrogen rather than send the electricity via cables.
Singapore is building a similar project, a large solar array in Australia connected by undersea cable[0].
I think it makes a lot more sense for a city state like Singapore, with very limited space to build their own power infrastructure.
But for a country like the UK, just the energy security risk alone seems dangerous, especially after what we have seen with the Russian gas pipelines.
These cables can easily be attacked, any country with a semi-competent navy could probably pull it off covertly, which would make attribution difficult.
Although I guess the US could have been a little more covert about their efforts[1].
Assuming the economic projections are accurate, the amount of good the energy would do, not least of which from the reduced CO2 emissions and reduced poverty, absolutely dwarfs the environmental damage caused by the placement of solar panels in the relatively small area of sparsely populated desert ecosystems that would be required.
This absurdly short-sighted environmental obstructionism reminds me of how it ended up being the Green parties, and environmental groups like Greenpeace, that were the biggest impediment to the expansion of nuclear power - which is far and away the most promising substitute for fossil fuels - over the last four decades, and consequently and farcically, it was the environmental movement that ended up becoming perhaps the single biggest contributor to CO2 emissions since 1970.
The (strong?) electromagnetic fields from these cables must have some impact on marine systems, and I bet we don't well understand what that impact will be.
Years or decades later we may trace some significant change in marine systems back to this source, and then we may decide that the cost was much greater than the benefit. We have a habit of making decisions for short term gain and intentionally downplaying the potential risks...
Even short term, I wouldn't be surprised if Portugal felt the impact within one decade, as they are very dependent on fishing along their coast.
The dumb part is running the cable 2300mi from Morocco to UK. It would make a lot more sense to run the cable across Straits of Gibraltar. Could even run it to territory of UK. And then spend the rest of the money improving transmission lines across Europe. Power and money are fungible.
Or use the money to run multiple lines to Europe. Solar in Sahara for Europe makes a lot of sense. The article mentions a couple of projects.
[+] [-] yuliyp|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nerdponx|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gotoeleven|3 years ago|reply
The only real accomplishment the global warming people have achieved is to make energy much more expensive and energy supplies much more unstable (e.g. california, europe)
Most environmentalists surely have good intentions, but they (like most people) are not experts on climate science and those that are have conflicted interests. For academics, you can only get one answer or you are cast out and shunned as a big oil lackey. For activist groups like greenpeace etc they only raise money by being alarmist. And then some are simply motivated by the desire to hurt western economies.
https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2020/12/21/chinas_g...
[+] [-] uoaei|3 years ago|reply
What's the cost-benefit of installing heavy transmissions infrastructure for the desert? The shore? The sea and ocean? Everyone and everything who live there? How vulnerable is that infrastructure to natural and artificial disasters, and what costs do we bear to build resilience to those outcomes?
Aren't surrounding communities also in need of strong consistent power? Why not move the power less distance (far less materials, less power losses) and serve a different population?
The classic thought-terminating cliche of if we covered X% of the Sahara we could power the whole globe obviously ignores the act of moving that energy from one place to another, which is a huge endeavor, to say the least.
Your argument is basically of the flavor "why is California still in a drought while the Mississippi river rages?"
[+] [-] Forestessential|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] boosting6889|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] akira2501|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peoplearepeople|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kinnth|3 years ago|reply
These solar projects are good to start as they could empower more african nations with cheaper electricty. We just need more electricity everywhere if were going to drop the reliance on oil.
[+] [-] consumer451|3 years ago|reply
Here is a crazy idea: don't put all your eggs in one basket. Try to do both.
This project only addresses 8% of UK needs, plenty of room for other sources in the portfolio.
How is this a bad thing?
[+] [-] nicoburns|3 years ago|reply
Given that most countries don't have a source of uranium, I don't see how this is any better from a geopolitical security perspective.
[+] [-] nottathrowaway3|3 years ago|reply
UK (and France) already have the bomb; going renewable here rather than nuclear has nothing to do with proliferation. I don't see how (for the UK) it's anything except people's feelings are hurt by nuclear power plants.
For the rest of Europe maybe it's about proliferation. And maybe economies of scale make tagging along cheaper than local nuclear for Britain.
[+] [-] epistasis|3 years ago|reply
I think that there was a narrow window in time where labor costs were low enough for nuclear to make sense, but in more advanced economies, highly labor intensive energy sources, as required by nuclear construction, are no longer viable. Advanced manufacturing capabilities have eclipsed construction technology.
[+] [-] thrashh|3 years ago|reply
The UK, for example, imports nearly half of its food.
[+] [-] micromacrofoot|3 years ago|reply
Versus going across international borders for most other aspects of their economy? if the UK stopped international trade it would completely collapse anyway.
[+] [-] NKosmatos|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vkou|3 years ago|reply
(That, and nuclear weapon ambitions.)
[+] [-] incone123|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frognumber|3 years ago|reply
Impossible in capitalism or with modern politics, but I planning for failure makes a lot of sense to me, and I don't mind having a power grid support 2x capacity.
Same for food, medicine, and general-purpose manufacturing (e.g. machine shops), for that matter.
[+] [-] perihelions|3 years ago|reply
Absolute madness to lead the article with lessons learned from Russian energy dependence, and segue into "let's put our eggs into this civil war basket-case". Never mind the moral arguments of investing in power plants on illegally annexed territory with no sovereign government. As a practical matter: what happens when conflicts break out again, and the keys to your high-value industrial economy are in some third-world warzone?
[+] [-] nashashmi|3 years ago|reply
Morocco ended up in the web of French and Spanish Colonialism. It lost some land during independence, some of which ended up in formerly French Algeria after the French left up. Western Sahara was one of those territories where the King of Morocco had 350k people march into the land and tell the colonialists of the Sahara whose land it really was.
It is just bonkers that the UN does not recognize Western Sahara that Morocco has exercised sovereignty over for so long as part of Morocco. It just feeds into the idea that the UN is nothing more than a central conglomerated vasal of colonialist rule.
[+] [-] AlbertCory|3 years ago|reply
(paraphrasing) "It's an interconnected world. We'll just take it in our stride!"
There. Do you feel better now?
[+] [-] whywhywhydude|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mohamedattahri|3 years ago|reply
I wouldn't be as definitive about the "good" in it as you make it sound.
[+] [-] threeseed|3 years ago|reply
It ignores the fact that climate change is disproportionally going to affect Africa and that doing nothing does not mean the status quo remains for nomadic tribes.
It means more desertification, less grazing area and greater poverty.
[+] [-] rurp|3 years ago|reply
This is categorically false. Solar panels actually increase the ambient temperature in the area [0]. Directly under a panel will be cooler, but those areas are 1. Heavily disturbed, with most the native plants an animals destroyed on installation and 2. Small compared to the total affected area.
Solar fields take up a large amount of space and installing a new one involves damaging a lot of native landscape.
Despite the drawbacks I think that solar is usually quite a bit better on net than the energy it's replacing, but we should still be clear about the costs and drawbacks.
[0]https://www.nature.com/articles/srep35070
[+] [-] Retric|3 years ago|reply
I doubt it would be significant for the Amazon in the short term, but it could mean less frequent but larger tropical storms in the mid Atlantic which then pound the east coast. Perhaps it’s a net good globally and just bad for America and the Caribbean, I don’t actually know.
However, these plans don’t actually involve that much land so the net effect is probably minimal compared to the gain from reducing natural gas useage.
[+] [-] seiferteric|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] h0l0cube|3 years ago|reply
Instead of altering unique grassland and desert ecosystems, and displacing nomadic tribes, the better option for 'the environment' and its peoples would be to build nuclear power plants.
[+] [-] vndsodfogis|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yodsanklai|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xthrown1|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kinnth|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jokoon|3 years ago|reply
panels don't produce that much power, you need a lot of them
[+] [-] nl|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samwillis|3 years ago|reply
"UK-Morocco 10GW Renewable Electricity Interconnector Planned"
110 points, 243 comments
[+] [-] Jerry2|3 years ago|reply
So how on Earth do you expect to secure such a massive length of cable?
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/us/politics/nord-stream-p...
[2] https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2023-03/nordstream-2-ukr...
[+] [-] Havoc|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AlbertCory|3 years ago|reply
So if an adversary can cut off 8% of your energy just by blowing up the pipeline at any of its more vulnerable spots, what prevents them? Should we call this the Full Employment for the Royal Navy Act?
[+] [-] nickdothutton|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] diordiderot|3 years ago|reply
https://youtu.be/iJunxkln578
[+] [-] dzhiurgis|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] credit_guy|3 years ago|reply
The only problem is the security of the cable. After Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and the blowup of the Nordstream pipelines, you can't take this security for granted. I think it would make more sense to ship liquefied hydrogen rather than send the electricity via cables.
[+] [-] WatchDog|3 years ago|reply
I think it makes a lot more sense for a city state like Singapore, with very limited space to build their own power infrastructure.
But for a country like the UK, just the energy security risk alone seems dangerous, especially after what we have seen with the Russian gas pipelines.
These cables can easily be attacked, any country with a semi-competent navy could probably pull it off covertly, which would make attribution difficult.
Although I guess the US could have been a little more covert about their efforts[1].
[0]: https://suncable.energy/
[1]: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/02/09/ftaz-f09.html
[+] [-] ETH_start|3 years ago|reply
This absurdly short-sighted environmental obstructionism reminds me of how it ended up being the Green parties, and environmental groups like Greenpeace, that were the biggest impediment to the expansion of nuclear power - which is far and away the most promising substitute for fossil fuels - over the last four decades, and consequently and farcically, it was the environmental movement that ended up becoming perhaps the single biggest contributor to CO2 emissions since 1970.
[+] [-] andrewstuart|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michaelteter|3 years ago|reply
Years or decades later we may trace some significant change in marine systems back to this source, and then we may decide that the cost was much greater than the benefit. We have a habit of making decisions for short term gain and intentionally downplaying the potential risks...
Even short term, I wouldn't be surprised if Portugal felt the impact within one decade, as they are very dependent on fishing along their coast.
[+] [-] consumer451|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ianburrell|3 years ago|reply
Or use the money to run multiple lines to Europe. Solar in Sahara for Europe makes a lot of sense. The article mentions a couple of projects.
[+] [-] quickthrower2|3 years ago|reply