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If it makes it beyond the drawing broad, Desertec would be the world's largest, most ambitious and expensive green energy project ever: a series of solar thermal power plants across the Sahara desert connecting Africa under the Mediterranean Sea to Europe's power grid.

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welve European companies launched a 400-billion-euro (560-billion-dollar) initiative Monday to plant huge solar farms in Africa and the Middle East to produce energy for Europe.

The consortium says the massive proposal could provide up to 15 percent of Europe's electricity needs by 2050.

Engineering giants ABB and Siemens, energy groups E.ON and RWE and financial institutions Deutsche Bank and Munich Re are among the companies which signed a protocol in Munich.

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In unveiling the proposal, which calls for building huge swaths of solar thermal plants in the Sahara, wind farms on the North African coast, and high-voltage transmission lines to carry all that juice back to Europe, the Desertec companies first stressed all the business opportunities the plan would represent, then paid lip service to the environment.

desertec solar power wind energy MENA siemens rwe greenmonktv

IT IS an old idea. Build solar power stations in the Sahara desert and transport the electricity produced to Europe using high-voltage, direct-current (HVDC) cables. It is simple in theory, but hard in practice—and very, very costly. But it is a carbon-dioxide-free way of making a lot of electricity, and a collecting area the size of Austria could supply the world.

A meeting on July 13th might get the ball rolling

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