Obviously, the best places to install solar plants are those where there are a high number of hours of sunshine per day. However, the great deserts, such as that of the Gobi or the Sahararemain free of solar panels. We might think that the reason is its changing climate. But that wouldn’t really be a problem, since you have batteries to store energy which is obtained in the sunny hours during the night or on cloudy days. So why are solar panels still not being built in the Sahara?
The truth is that it is a complicated question. According to statements by the physicist Gerhard Knies, collected by The confidential, in just six hours deserts around the world receive more solar energy (173,000 terawatts) than humans consume in a year. Furthermore, only in the Sahara, energy would be obtained to supply 96 lands. But there is a problem.
Just a 15% of the energy absorbed by solar panels it is converted into electricity. The rest is returned to the atmosphere as heat, which could make global warming much worse. Is that an insurmountable reason? Not for other experts, but the truth is that it is still a complicated decision.
The danger of solar panels in the desert
Solar panels are darker than the desert sand. This normally helps store excess solar energy. However, being darker, the plates will absorb more. The problem is that, unlike the sand, the plates return energy they do not use back into the atmosphere. This returned heat can be transported in the air to other areas of the planet, causing serious climate problems.
But this is what would happen if we covered the entire Sahara or any other great desert with solar panels. Some experts argue that it would suffice cover a small area. Thus, although not as much energy would be obtained, the atmosphere would not heat up as much either. In fact, according to Mehran Moalemprofessor at the University of California, it would suffice to cover the 1.2% of the desert to get enough power. Even so, there would still be other drawbacks, As this scientist well acknowledges in a study published in Science.
Ecosystem changes
Since the solar panels would absorb a good part of the solar radiationwould reduce the albedo. That is, the percentage of radiation that a surface reflects with respect to that which falls on it. This, together with the increase in surface frictionwould favor an increase in rainfallwhich in turn would promote the growth of vegetation. This would cause even more rainfall, feeding back the previous situation. In short, a change would take place in the ecosystem, affecting the species that are adapted to another type of landscape.
The political question that should not be left aside
Speaking to BBC, Tony Pattprofessor of climate policy at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, argues that the problem is more political than scientific.
Specifically, remember that although prices are increasingly competitive, solar energy is still more expensive than that obtained from fossil fuels. For this reason, he doubts that places like Europe would be willing to make that investment if the jobs go to non-European countries. It should be noted that for the entire installation a 10% of world GDPSo it’s not a small thing.
In addition, the logical thing, as added in the same medium danie egbea chemist and analyst for the World Bank, is that this electricity and jobs be shared with Africans.
only around the 30% of the sub-Saharan population have access to electricity. For this reason, if solar panels are installed in the Sahara, the fair and logical thing to do is to share the benefits with them. To guarantee this, there is African Solar Power Networkwhose purpose is precisely that Africans are taken into account when making this type of decision.
As a result, getting solar power in the Sahara is not as simple as arriving and covering it with solar panels. There is a lot to take into account. Perhaps in the future it will be a plausible solution, taking into account methods to avoid its climate impact. But, today, most experts agree that it would be very complicated.