Living now in Paris I am able to go easily to conferences. Yesterday I was attending to a conference given by Mr.Paul van Son and Dr. Oliver Steinmetz, the CEO of Desertec Industries and member of the supervisory board, respectively.
Their enthusiasm and visionary ambitions are highly communicative. I now compare the Desertec project to the Apollo program which sent men on the moon in less than a decade. Many thought it couldn’t be done at the time.
David JC MacKay in his brilliant book Sustainable Energy Without Hot Air stated that Europe won’t be able to rely completely on local renewables.
He thus noted that we needed either nuclear, either foreign renewables or even both. I personally believe we will need both atomic energy and concentrated solar and wind energy from North Africa.
Indeed, the energy we currently get from foreign oil will have to be replaced. Coal fired plants are killing people as we speak which make it difficult to keep using this energy source.
We are talking about massive quantities of electrons to replace. Only projects like Desertec will enable us to change our whole electricity infrastructure.
I planned from Day 1 to keep you posted on Desertec. This is more than ever the case.
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(Many thanks to my good friend Julien Damelet for the tip about the conference.)