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Europe needs energy. Moroccan solar may be a clean solution
- ReptileMan 4y agoNo thanks. Depending on foreign energy suppliers has shown to be error.
- ggm 4y agoOh well, better turn off all the existing north sea and channel powerlinks then. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_Link https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_Link https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BritNed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BritNed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC_Cross-Channel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC_Cross-Channel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IFA-2 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IFA-2 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ElecLink https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ElecLink https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemo_Link https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemo_Link
- NDizzle 4y agoNo, what I’m sure the poster means is to stop continuing this madness.
- mdp2021 4y agoDiversification. You need a proper structured set of diversified assets. (The cheap and less reliable, the expensive fallback etc.)
- igravious 4y agoWhat's wrong with nuclear power? Seems to work well enough for the US, for India, for China, for France, and a bunch of other places. I'm puzzled why we'd have to enter into a relationship with Morocco when nuclear power is proven clean tech, at least a hundred years old. Am I missing something?
- stavros 4y agoThere's nothing wrong with nuclear power, but it's not an either/or question. We need all the clean energy we can get.
- ragebol 4y agoAs you might have noticed, nuclear power is not free of any downsides. But neither is wind, solar, fossil fuels, but especially with nuclear there's about 40-50 years of momentum against them in the public opinion, rational or not. So there's that. The bigger problem is we only want things without downsides, which don't exist.
- tete 4y ago> Seems to work well enough [...] for France I am not so sure about that. At least not if you ONLY rely on nuclear. https://www.euractiv.com/section/electricity/news/electricity-exporter-for-42-years-france-became-a-net-importer-in-2022/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/electricity/news/electricit... France massively profits from being part of the European grid. While the above is about a year time frame, France is frequently an importer. That's why there's big grids with different producers, consumers, and forms of storage, like pumped-storage. Having just nuclear power would be really dumb. Just like just solar, just wind, etc.
- SilverBirch 4y agoSure, there's plenty of reasons not to build nuclear. Firstly, it's not cheap compared to modern solar and that trend is likely to continue. Secondly, it's not a responsive source of electricity - so you can't modulate the output easily. Thirdly, it takes a long time to bring on line, especially the more modern reactors have been prone to massive delays with an EPR reactor in Finland being over a decade late and Hinkley Point C in the UK, and Flamanville in France both being massively late, massively over budget and still unfinished. Fourthly, as we found last year, during heat waves rivers can run dry causing a shortage of water to cool the plants forcing them to go offline. I'm not saying there's no benefit to Nuclear, there definitely is, and it should be part of the mix, but it's not a replacement for a decent investment in Solar.
- Mrdarknezz 4y agoJust build more nuclear lol
- stavros 4y agoCan we stop with the false dichotomy? More nuclear is good, and more solar is good too.
- acdha 4y agoCo-signed. Nuclear has a potentially key role for dealing with things like heavy industrial demand in areas where there might not be great options for storing enough renewable power to make it through down periods for renewables, but the ramp up time is considerable and there’s plenty of usage we can shift before we need to tackle the most demanding customers. The only honest way to advocate for nuclear power is paired with maximum renewable deployment – otherwise it starts to look like the known strategy of arguing for nuclear power to delay reducing fossil fuel industry profits, knowing that it’ll be 3-4 decades before anything changes.
- fmajid 4y agoDon't forget more grid-scale electricity storage, whether batteries or pumped hydro like the massive Coire Glas project in Scotland.
- ragebol 4y agoFine, just start. Find a place that has willing neighbors, then spend 10-20 years building it and plz prevent cost overruns. It'll be ready too late to contribute to our near-term (2030) goals. But not for the later goals of course. Good start building ASAP anyways, but not at the expense of things that are faster to deploy.
- mdp2021 4y ago> willing neighbors There is a chance I cannot compute (not a specialist) that the long drought wave in Europe - meaning, the lack of certainty of the reliable flow of rivers - may impose extra burden on the selection of eligible fitting places.
- stavros 4y ago> one side of the Mediterranean is far drearier and cloudier than the other Is it talking about the famously dreary countries of Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, etc?
- matthewdgreen 4y agoHere’s a solar resource map of Europe showing a bit of North Africa. A picture is worth 10,000 words. https://solargis.com/maps-and-gis-data/download/europe https://solargis.com/maps-and-gis-data/download/europe
- HopenHeyHi 4y ago[flagged]
- Grum9 4y agoHot. As a bonus, Europe can always punish them by taking cold showers if they misbehave.
- cjrp 4y ago> Past proposals have suggested that North African energy projects could meet as much as 15 percent of Europe’s electricity demand. It's a significant chunk, but obviously needs to be supplemented with more solar/hydro/wind/nuclear in Europe to cause a significant reduction in CO2/kWh. https://twitter.com/european_grid https://twitter.com/european_grid is always an interesting read, seeing how much the generation method varies between neighbouring countries.
- HopenHeyHi 4y agoArguments against: - Sand/Dirt - Excess Heat - Transmission losses - Political instability - Geopolitics (Algeria, other issues..) Arguments for: - Gets around NIMBY - ??? Panels need to be clean and cool (25c) to work optimally. Preferably close to where the energy is consumed. Incidentally the interiors of many sunny EU countries like Spain are depopulated..
- toldyouso2022 4y agoWe are not dealing with NIMBY. NIMBY at least allowed the concept of owning backyards...
- pjc50 4y agoIn all fairness, the closer to the equator you are the more efficient it is (less atmosphere, shallower angle, more regular day/night cycle). And it's not so much "NIMBY" as a genuine land cost issue. We could do well to expand rooftop solar on large buildings, though.
- HopenHeyHi 4y agoPanels covered in sand after a storm are zero percent efficient. In extreme heat they are 25% less efficient. Transmission over long distances is not lossless.
- hef19898 4y agoDidn't prevent Dubai from installing GW upon GW utility scale PV plants years ago. So, since it was already done more than once, I guess we can consider it a solved problem.
- automatic6131 4y agoYou would be surpised how little power is lost over a long transmission distances. The hitch is the people that can make such cables have a long back order list.
- sophacles 4y ago
- dncornholio 4y agoAlways thought this wouldn't be viable because of transportation. Is this a solved problem?
- fmajid 4y agoA High Voltage DC cable from Morocco to the UK is estimated to have under 10% power loss.
- slashdev 4y agoThe technology exists to do fairly efficient long distance transmission like that. Europe is small. It could work. Is it cheaper than putting the solar closer? Don’t know. It would be more consistent, which is a big deal with solar. That alone can compensate for a lot of inefficiency.
- RaoulP 4y agoI know that Norway has subsea power cables to various European countries. Apparently the North Sea Link[1] which came online in 2021, is the longest such cable in the world at 750 km. Drawing a 750 km line from the coast of Morocco I can almost reach Barcelona, Spain. With perhaps some advances, and including the distance of the branching network, I think reaching "enough" of European power consumption is doable. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_Link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_Link edit: actually, looking at terrestrial interconnectors the record is much farther already, 2210 km between Hami and Zhengzhou in China.[2] Coincidentally, Wikipedia mentions that the longest proposed cable is in fact the Xlinks Morocco-UK Power Project[3], which the Washington Post article failed to mention. At 3,800 km, the power losses would apparently amount to 13%. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interconnector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interconnector [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xlinks_Morocco-UK_Power_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xlinks_Morocco-UK_Power_Projec...
- rmccue 4y agoI believe the North Sea Link is specifically the longest undersea cable, not the longest transmission line; a more direct route could be taken across the Strait of Gibraltar with further transmission on land. For the purposes of argument, Ceuta to Algeciras would be connecting two parts of Spain and is only 30km across the strait.
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoMichael Liebreich has vouched for this idea, which slightly raises my opinion of it, but it still seems odd to me. https://twitter.com/MLiebreich/status/1645710705784664066 https://twitter.com/MLiebreich/status/1645710705784664066 It seems to be stuck in the past, talking about "baseload" and solar in deserts. Being part of an Europe wide supergrid that connects distributed storage and generation seems to be a much more modern take from the UK side. Meanwhile Morocco probably wants to be looking at ways it can turn its renewables into something it can sell to more than one country, probably via some kind of value-add industry. edit: one specific oddity, in order to make full use of the cable, they need to combine the solar with wind and batteries. But wind and batteries can be installed in the UK/North Sea, and wind is stronger in the winter.
- sega_sai 4y agoI wonder what are the local climate effects of fully covering the desert by solar panels (that's not exactly what will happen here but still). Presumably the temperature will be reduced, but I wonder if it's possible to use this to make that to make the area less deserty.
- sergioisidoro 4y agoIn the same paragraph the author acknowledges the dangers or relying on a foreign entity for energy supply, and ends up proposing the exact same thing. I'm all in for renewable when it makes sense, but I think it's time we stop pretending all renewables work everywhere. Solar is not going to work in Northen Europe, and transporting energy from the south is also not the solution. Nuclear is an essential piece of the climate puzzle, especially for northen climates, and these kinds of proposals feel like the German anti-nuclear agenda bending their backs to try and find _some way_ to make it work.
- fmajid 4y agoMorocco is much more politically stable and friendly than Algeria or (sadly now) Tunisia, let alone Egypt or Libya. It's also in their best interests, as reducing the importance of natural gas, that their frenemy Algeria is a major exporter of, enhances their geopolitical influence over Algeria, e.g. to obtain recognition of their claims to West Sahara. That said, anything can happen, monarchies can be overthrown, and Europe would be well-advised to keep additional capacity on tap domestically so it is not at the mercy of a new regime in Morocco the way it was with Russian gas.
- yread 4y agoWind on sea can generate 30GW/km2. Europe has tons of shallow seas (<50m) where it could be built - North Sea is fairly shallow and windy, Adriatic, Baltic, Celtic, Black sea, Channel, Gulf of Lion. Build peak power of 5x times the needed electricity, wind always blows somewhere. ENTSO-E needed ~500GW peak power in 2021, so 100km2 of sea wind turbines would cover it comfortably