Should We Solar Panel The Sahara?
The Inquiry
BBC
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 29 December 2015
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The world has a problem. The climate is changing. At least, most people think so. That’s why global leaders have been meeting in Paris to work out a way to deal with the problem. They blame carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, much of it released by the human need for energy, obtained from fossil fuels like oil and coal. But believe it or not the world also has a solution at hand: sunlight. Harvest it where it shines brightest, in the Sahara Desert for example, and you have the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card: a techno-fix to the mother of all problems. So, our question this week: why don't we solar panel the Sahara? Our contributors include: Gerhard Knies, a German physicist who has developed the idea; Tony Patt, who leads on this issue for the European Research Council; Daniel Egbe from the African Network for Solar Energy; and Helen Anne Curry, a technology historian, from Cambridge University in the UK. Presented by Michael Blastland
(Photo: Sahara Desert. Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to the BBC World Service. This is Michael Blasland with The Inquiry. |
| 0:07.0 | This week, should we solar panel the Sahara. Go to Wazazat in Morocco and the temperature under a blue sky in summer approaches 40 degrees Celsius. |
| 0:25.1 | A sea of glass panels is turned to face the blistering sun. |
| 0:29.3 | These panels take the heat and make it hotter. They concentrate it. Why? Because it can be used to generate |
| 0:37.2 | oceans of electrical power. The world has a problem, at least most people think so. The climate is changing. |
| 0:47.0 | They blame carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, much of it released by the human need for energy obtained from fossil fuels like oil and coal. |
| 0:57.0 | But the world also has a simple solution at hand, |
| 1:01.0 | and Waza Zat in Morocco is part of it. Yes, you heard right, there is a |
| 1:07.0 | source of renewable power, sunlight, and the means of harnessing it where it shines |
| 1:11.8 | brightest. Yes, it could be big enough easily. It's |
| 1:16.8 | in the desert. Who could object? So why not? If ever there was a get out of jail techno fixed to the mother of all |
| 1:26.3 | wickedly political social and economic problems surely this is it. So our question |
| 1:32.3 | this week why don't be solar panel, the Sahara? |
| 1:37.0 | Did I say simple? Well, kind of, which is what makes it fascinating. Part 1 on the back of an envelope. I did study physics because I was interested in energy issues and I was preferring nuclear power and also fusion. |
| 2:11.0 | So nuclear and sub-nuclear physics. |
| 2:14.0 | Gerhard Knez is our first expert witness. |
| 2:18.0 | Nearly 30 years ago his life changed direction with a single idea. |
| 2:22.0 | It happened one day in 1980. his life changed direction with a single idea. |
| 2:23.1 | It happened one day in 1986. |
| 2:25.9 | Swedish scientists have detected a sharp increase |
| 2:28.5 | in the level of radiation in the atmosphere. |
| 2:30.9 | They say it could have been caused by a leak at a nuclear power station in Russia. |
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