ABSTRACT
Our study reveals that concentrating solar power (CSP) can be used to fulfil the total electricity demand in Middle East (ME) and North African (NA) countries of 1700TWh/y in 2025, rising to 3600TWh/y in 2050, especially as an expanding technology with a growth of 25 to 35 per cent a year. A strong competition of several CSP technologies could lead to higher overall CSP growth rates than those assumed in the present study (around 30 per cent per year). In 2025 14 per cent of the electricity demand of MENA may be covered by CSP, which will become the dominating power source with a share of 57 per cent by 2050.
According to our scenarios the mix of renewable energies will cost around 5 cents/kWh in 2050. The cost of CSP will be reduced from the current 8 cents/kWh to 6 cents/kWh in 2010 to 5 cents/kWh in 2020 (other scenarios quote 15 cents/kWh). From 2020 until 2050, the MENA region will save US$250 billion compared to the business as usual policy scenario, where it was assumed that the fuel prices start at US$25/bbl for oil and US$49/ton for coal and escalate by only 1 per cent per year (currently the prices are at a level of US$55/bbl and US$65/ton respectively and the escalation rates have amounted to 40 per cent per year since 2003).
The study shows that solar thermal power plants are suitable for seawater desalination. A concentrating solar thermal collector array required for desalinating 1 billion m3/y would cover a total land area of approximately 10 x 10km, corresponding to about 10m3 of desalinated water per m2 of collector area. About 10 per cent of the desalinated water would suffice to irrigate the desert land beneath the collectors with a water column of 1m/y.
The study shows that the total carbon emissions of electricity generation of all MENA countries can be reduced from 770 million tons per year to 475 million tons in 2050, instead of increasing to 2000 million tons.
Furthermore, the greenhouse emissions from constructing the plants for most renewable energy technologies are between 10 and 25g/kWh of useful energy. In the case of photovoltaic systems, reductions are possible in the medium term to 262about 50g/kWh. The scenario reaches a per capita emission of 0.58 tons/cap/y in the power sector in 2050, which is acceptable in terms of the recommended total emission of 1–1.5 tons/cap.
