New Agreement Set to Accelerate Development of Desertec Project

Desertec is a giant solar project that will be developed in North Africa with the idea of supplying renewable energy both domestically, and to southern Europe via “high voltage direct current transmission lines.”

A new memorandum of understanding between the Moroccan government and the German-based Desertec Foundation is expected to accelerate the development of the project by promising to share their experience and technical expertise, and develop a strong policy framework.

In total the project is expected to have a capacity of over 2GW. Construction has already started in Morocco on the 500MW Ouarzazate concentrated solar power plant, one of the largest in the world, and completion is forecast for 2015.

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Cleantechnica wrote that the Desertec project will secure “Morocco’s position as one of the leading renewable energy markets in Africa, building on the government’s commitment to generate over 40 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020.”

The new agreement comes at just the right time to give the venture a boost following the announcement that the engineering giant Siemens was quitting the consortium behind the whole scheme due to the fact that they had decided to sell their solar business and focus on wind power.

By. Joao Peixe of Oilprice.com