29th November 2007

The White Paper "Clean Power from Deserts - The DESERTEC Concept for Energy, Water and Climate Security" is to be presented to the European Parliament in Brussels on November 28, by His Royal Highness Prince Hassan bin Talal of Jordan, former President of The Club of Rome. It is based on studies by the German Aerospace Center on the potential of deserts to supply clean power to Europe, the Middle East and North Africa (EU-MENA).

The White Paper proposes a solar co-operation between technology belt and sun-belt, between Europe and the MENA region, to fight climate change "in an economical and technically feasible way". Key technologies in the DESERTEC Concept are concentrating solar thermal power plants with solar heat storage for day/night operation, and low-loss high voltage direct current transmission lines to bring clean power to Europe from the deserts of MENA. A seven year action plan for kicking-off the DESERTEC Concept will be proposed at the presentation.

The DESERTEC Concept was developed by the Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation (TREC) in collaboration with scientists at the German Aerospace Center. The presentation in the European Parliament is staged by four Members of the European Parliament - Matthias Groote, Vittorio Prodi, Rebecca Harms and Anders Wijkman - and by the Club of Rome initiative TREC.

“Every year, each square kilometre of desert receives solar energy equivalent to 1.5 million barrels of oil. Multiplying by the area of deserts world-wide, this is nearly a thousand times the entire current energy consumption of the world.” said Dr Franz Trieb, Project Manager for a set of reports on trans European renewable energy networks.

The white paper itself can be found at: www.DESERTEC.org