Jul 13, 2009, 10:54 GMT
Munich - German firms on Monday launched a renewable energy project designed to provide European households with electricity from the Sahara.
Utilities giants RWE and E.ON, electro-engineering group Siemens and Deutsche Bank are among the dozen companies involved in the 400- billion-euro (552-billion-dollar) Desertec Industrial Initiative.
The consortium agreed to form a consultancy by the end of October, which would look into methods of financing and present a concrete investment plan within three years.
The Desertec project calls for an array of solar thermal power plants to be deployed in the deserts of North Africa and the Mediterranean.
These types of power plants use parabolic mirrors to concentrate sunlight to create heat which is used to produce steam to drive turbines and electricity generators.
Using high voltage direct current transmission lines, the energy could then be transferred to Europe where it could supply 15 per cent of the continent's electricity needs.
But countries in the Middle East-North Africa region would also benefit, the initiators said in a joint statement.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has called Desertec 'a truly visionary project.'
'It offers great potential for regional cooperation in all of North Africa and between those states that still have closed borders,' he said in Berlin.
Some experts have questioned where financing for the mammoth project will come from.
Solar thermal technology has been used in California's Mojave desert since the mid-1980s and is also in operation in the arid region of Andalusia in the south of Spain.
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