News blog

Management row threatens to blow Sahara solar dream

Plans to supply Europe with electricity generated in North Africa suffered another blow this week when the DESERTEC Foundation, set up in 2009 to promote the idea, pulled out of the industrial consortium which is trying to advance the €400-billion (US$514-billion) project.

The split, agreed upon during an extraordinary DESERTEC board meeting on 27 June, is the climax of growing tensions between the founders of the project and the Dii consortium — including Deutsche Bank and German energy utilities Eon and RWE — over management and strategy issues. Solar power capacities are expanding throughout North Africa and the Middle East — but Dii has recently scaled back ambitions, hinting to political and technical problems with transmitting massive amounts of electricity from North Africa to Europe.

The DESERTEC foundation — sole owner of the project’s brand name — has been increasingly unhappy with how internal discussions over the future of the project leaked to the press.

“It was always clear to us that our idea of producing electricity from the deserts (…) was never an easy task and will always face extreme challenges,” Thiemo Gropp, director of the DESERTEC Foundation, said in a statement.

“However, after many months filled with a lot of discussions we had to conclude that the DESERTEC Foundation needs to preserve its independence. [Our exit] is the result of many irresolvable disputes between the two entities in the area of future strategies, obligations and their communication.”

Gropp said the dispute has “negatively affected” DESERTEC’s reputation but he did not rule out future cooperation between the two organizations.

Analysts have repeatedly criticized the project as too big and expensive. Pulling the plug on its loss-making solar business, German engineering giant Siemens, based in Munich, quit Dii last year. Technology supplier Bosch, based in Stuttgart, also pulled out last year.

Comments

  1. Pau Cortes Font de Rubinat said:

    Get one source for Europes energy needs and you will be subject to all kinds of blackmails and attacks. Does the project also pln to deploy an army to protect the installations?

    Report this comment Cancel report
    Your details

    Please confirm the words below

    In order to reduce spamming, this process ensures you are a real person and not an automated program.

  2. Timmathy Griffin said:

    Was never easy? Of course it won’t be easy, good thing take time and patience. It’s not impossible to build an electricity generator. Naturally there will be major setbacks of various kind, but that shouldn’t stop them.

Comments are closed.