Solar Thermal Power Coming to a Boil
(Page 3 of 4)
July 22, 2008
By Jonathan G. Dorn, Earth Policy Institute
Using solar thermal plants to power electric vehicles could further reduce CO2 emissions and provide strategic advantages by relaxing dependence on oil. In Israel, a tender issued by the Ministry for National Infrastructures for the construction of solar thermal plants and a 19.4 cents per kilowatt-hour feed-in tariff for solar power systems are sparking interest in developing up to 250 megawatts of concentrated solar power in the Negev Desert. This would produce enough electricity to run the 100,000 electric cars that Better Place, a company focused on building an electric personal transportation system, is planning to put on Israeli roads by the end of 2010.
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A study by Ausra, a solar energy company based in California, indicates that over 90 percent of fossil fuel generated electricity in the United States and the majority of U.S. oil usage for transportation could be eliminated using solar thermal power plants — and for less than it would cost to continue importing oil. The land requirement for the CSP plants would be roughly 15,000 square miles (38,850 square kilometers, the equivalent of 15 percent of the land area of Nevada). While this may sound like a large tract, CSP plants use less land per equivalent electrical output than large hydroelectric dams when flooded land is included, or than coal plants when factoring in land used for coal mining. Another study, published in Scientific American, proposes using photovoltaic and solar thermal plants to produce 69 percent of U.S. electricity and 35 percent of total U.S. energy, including transportation, by 2050.
Solar thermal plants on less than 0.3 percent of the desert areas of North Africa and the Middle East could generate enough electricity to meet the needs of these two regions plus the European Union. Realizing this, the Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation — an initiative of The Club of Rome, the Hamburg Climate Protection Foundation and the National Energy Research Center of Jordan — conceived the DESERTEC Concept in 2003. This plan to develop a renewable energy network to transmit power to Europe from the Middle East and North Africa calls for 100,000 megawatts of concentrated solar power to be built throughout the Middle East and North Africa by 2050. Electricity delivery to Europe would occur via direct current transmission cables across the Mediterranean. Taking the lead in making the concept a reality, Algeria plans to build a 3,000-kilometer cable between the Algerian town of Adrar and the German city of Aachen that will export 6,000 megawatts of solar thermal power by 2020.
