(a surface area map source)
The above map looks different from the maps we know, it’s a Gall–Peters projection, instead of the usual Mercator Projection. Instead It shows the true surface area and has different lines cutting it up (they don’t converge at the poles). .
It shows an interesting aspect of Europe, not matched by China or the US, and that is the enormous area of barely inhabited desert land in North Africa. The insolation (solar energy) in the region is enormous. A fraction of it populated by solar power plants could power the world.
Several of the North African countries are making strides in adopting renewable energy, solar, for instance Morocco, where CSP (concentrated solar power) plants are up and running, and an Ivanpah type Ouarzazate 160 MW CSP project has just started. The country is also investing in wind energy.
(A river runs through it.. source)
“There should be a ‘Europe-wide drive’ towards wind, tidal, solar and other sources of renewable power” Prof Victor Anderson
Morocco also invests in wind farms and attempts are made to partner up by german CSP companies. The cooperative exploitation of solar and wind resources in North Africa seems a much better idea than the IMF/WB/Wallstreet led ‘Arab springs’, crisi and series of painfull revolutions around the mediterranian to extract assets, oil, gas and reduce consumption. See Pierre Jovanovics interview about Blythe Masters.
The Desertec initiative (an industrial cooperation whit the goal of getting solar electricity from North Africe) has had many critics, like Herman Scheer, who like us saw through it’s delaying tactics. A nice interactive map of what has been achieved can be found here (as shown above).
We’d propose the blang zone at the bottom of the above map as Extraeconomical territoriy, protected by all of the above, for massive CCS, which done right means carbon fuel production (not CO2 storage, that is lame and unstabile). The people in the regions can be employed, fed and kept on a high standard of living.
We know resources that are yet untapped to make the process of building the installations much cheaper and feasible, even if it seems like an enormous task., but the object of ‘mining’ the EurAfrican Power Block for renewables, yielding more than 100% the energy we gain today by polluting our land, air and water by burning fossil fuels, seems to be a focus that can bring peace, health, wealth and a stabilizing force for our ecosystem and perhaps the world.