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The Age has an article on calls to power Australia using solar thermal power and geothermal power from the dead heart - Running on empty: deserts could solve energy crisis. DESERTS could generate enough renewable energy to power Australia, in the process creating unprecedented opportunities for its remote communities, a leading scientist says. Dr Barrie Pittock, a lead author with the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and former head of CSIRO's climate impact group, says deserts could also create a substantial clean energy export industry focused on Asia. He today will tell an Alice Springs deserts symposium that Australia is better placed to develop clean energy than almost any other nation, mainly due to its capacity for large-scale solar and geothermal power plants.

Even with those efforts we support we still have to make hard choices and it is not as easy when struggling against the giant oild companies.

Feinstein is working on legislation that would designate hundreds of thousands of acres of desert land as a national monument, which would put them off-limits for solar and wind energy projects. That could result in a green- versus-green confrontation, pitting those who want to protect the desert ecosystem against those who believe renewable-energy projects are a vital part of the struggle to avert catastrophic climate change.

June 5, 2008 -- Solar power from Africa's deserts could supply all 600 million citizens currently without electricity and even export power to Europe, a green energy conference in Nairobi heard Thursday. The ferocious desert sun could provide the energy equivalent of 1.5 barrels of oil per square kilometer, said Gerhard Knies, project manager for Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation (TREC), at a meeting of nine African states.

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California's utilities are in a tight spot. They're mandated to procure 20 percent of their electricity from renewable resources by the end of next year. Currently, renewable energy provides only 12 percent of the state's needs. Green energy is needed, and fast. Where to get it? The southeastern corner of California is becoming the state's Wild West of renewable energy. Five years from now this patch of desert will hold one of the largest solar thermal plants in the world. An area of 10 square miles will be filled with 38,000 "sun catchers," which look like enormous satellite dishes with mirrors.

The Peruvian alternative energy company Iberoperuana Inversiones SAC has commenced construction on a 240 megawatt wind energy farm. It is Peru's first major alternative energy project. Iberoperuana Inversiones plans to invest $240 million in the farm, which is projected to provide clean electricity for an estimated 80,000 families in Peru's southern desert region of Paracas. The wind energy park will be located near the city of Ica (near Paracas National Park and the Nazca Lines) and will be known as the "Parque Eólico San Andrés" (San Andrés Wind Park).

At the risk of sounding like a cheerleader, the scale of some of the new solar power plants being announced over the past few weeks are just astounding. PG&E has contracted with a 250 MW and a 500 MW solar plant in California, a 250 MW integrated solar plant/manufacturing facility is being built in India, and the Clinton Foundation is discussing building a similar 5,000 MW facility in a different part of India. At the beginning of the summer a new 10 MW thin-film facility was claiming the record for that category and a 400 MW solar thermal plant in the Mojave Desert was big news. Furthering the great solar scale-up:

Winds rush through the capital city of China, blowing dust storms that envelop it in grit from the encroaching Gobi Desert each spring. Last year, the government finally took advantage of those winds, installing 33 wind turbines manufactured by domestic company Xinjiang Gold Wind at the Guanting wind power field to harvest this energy and use it to supplement the electricity provided by polluting coal. Those suburban turbines began turning in earnest on January 20, providing 35 million kilowatt-hours of electricity to Beijing through July, or roughly 300,000 kilowatt-hours a day.

According to a study published in the July 14, 2000, issue of Science, one-third of the world's population is water-stressed, with 8 percent classified as severely water-stressed, including the western United States and northern Mexico, South America, India, China, Africa surrounding the Sahara Desert, and southern Africa and Australia. "Water stress" has profoundly different meanings in developed and developing countries. In Africa and many parts of Asia, it means inadequate water for drinking, sanitation and crops. In emerging economies such as India and China, it translates as an inability to meet the dietary and lifestyle aspirations of a growing middle class.

Using the sun combined with nature's way of turning solar power into life-sustaining energy can be captured, artificially induced and could provide enough power in less than an hour to run the house, the car and bring on an era of true energy independence. The power of solar is not on the grand scale of collectors spread over square acres in the west desert, says Daniel Nocera, a widely cited chemist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is scheduled to speak at Utah State University this week.

A tiny rectangle superimposed on the vast expanse of the Sahara captures the seductive appeal of the audacious plan to cut Europe's carbon emissions by harnessing the fierce power of the desert sun. Dwarfed by any of the north African nations, it represents an area slightly smaller than Wales but scientists claimed yesterday it could one day generate enough solar energy to supply all of Europe with clean electricity.

One man in the classroom earned more than $100,000 framing tract homes during the building heyday. Another installed pools and piloted a backhoe. Behind him sat a young father who made a good living swinging a hammer in southern Utah. But that was before construction jobs vanished like a fast-moving dust storm in this blustery high desert. Hard times have brought them to a classroom in Kern County, about 120 miles northeast of Los Angeles, to learn a different trade. Tonight's lesson: how to avoid death and dismemberment. This is Wind Technology Boot Camp at Cerro Coso Community College, where eight weeks of study and $1,000 in tuition might lead to a job repairing mammoth wind turbines sprouting up across the nation.

Spiegel Online published a series of pictures titled "Desertec: Strom aus der Wüste" (translation: Desertech: Electricity from the desert). It includes this image of how much land would be needed to power the world, Europe or Germany with solar-thermal power. The idea is similar to a post we did a year ago: How Much Land to Power The Whole World with Solar?

The strangest and longest battle of the American West was fought not between early settlers and Indians but between two collectors of fossils. The Bone Wars, as the bitter clash became known, raged in the shadow of remote cliffs, in desert encampments, in university laboratories, and on the pages of academic journals.

Power lines, such as those near Hoover Dam, cannot be built to reach remote areas for renewable energy development until the areas for energy production are agreed upon. Several entities have offered or are working on maps locating renewable energy resources. By Alexandra Berzon (contact) Tue, Jun 16, 2009 (2 a.m.) Click to enlarge photo Chris Morris Related Document (.pdf) * See the Western Renewable Energy Zones report Sun Archives * State thinks big on solar power (6-15-2009) * The power of the desert (4-5-2009) * State faces obstacles to cashing in on sun (3-9-2009) Sun Coverage * Archive of Sun energy stories Related Story * States, energy secretary agree to safe nuclear waste transport On one map they look like bubbles. On another they're more like hot dogs. These shaded circles and oblongs in Nevada and across the West could one day be clusters of solar power plants, wind farms or geothermal energy projects.

The Guardian has an article on a report from Greenpeace, the European Solar Thermal Electricity Association and the International Energy Agency's SolarPACES group on the potential for solar thermal power to supply a large proportion of our energy needs (why they limit it to 25% is a mystery to me) - Concentrated solar power could generate 'quarter of world's energy'. Solar power stations that concentrate sunlight could generate up to one-quarter of the world's electricity needs by 2050, according to a study by environmental and solar industry groups. The technology, best suited to the desert regions of the world, could also create hundreds of thousands of new jobs and save millions of tonnes of CO2 from entering the atmosphere. Concentrating solar power (CSP) uses mirrors to focus sunlight onto water. This produces steam that can then turn turbines and generate electricity. It differs from photovoltaics, which use solar panels to turn sunlight directly into electricity and can operate even on overcast days. CSP only works in places where there are many days with clear skies and is a proven, reliable technology. At the end of 2008 CSP capacity was around 430MW, and worldwide investment in the technology will reach

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Can you imagine being able to produce enough water in the Sahara to grow crops there? Can you imagine harnessing sufficient quantities of solar power to supply electricity to cities in Africa and cities in Europe? Can you imagine producing a sustainable bio-fuel that doesn't impact on world food supplies? Charlie Paton, Michael Pawlyn and Bill Watts can and what's more they can imagine all these happening in the same place at the same time.

t's becoming crystal clear that the resolution of America's energy crisis is now the centerpiece of the current election campaign; it could conceivably be the decisive issue that decides the future occupant of the White House. Advertisement This is increasingly motivated by public opinion, which heavily favors a "drill now" commitment.