Solar power can have a funny effect on people.
Take the Prince of Orange, for example, who was a keynote speaker at last week’s future energy summit in Abu Dhabi.
He used his leading spot under the limelight in the presence of Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, to announce that he was plotting a revolution.
Had he taken leave of his senses? It was, after all, Prince Willem-Alexander’s direct ancestor, William of Orange, who in 1586 started an 80-year war against the Spanish that led to the creation of an independent Dutch republic.
But the Crown Prince of the Netherlands was not referring to a political revolt, of course. It was the scale of the change afoot in the solar energy field that prompted him to unleash such a powerful metaphor.
The approaching peak of the world’s supplies of finite fuels, including oil, gas, uranium and coal, constitutes a threat that could lead to a collapse of modern civilisation, he said, drawing a parallel with the exhaustion of wood as one factor that helped bring down the Roman empire.
Every 30 minutes, the earth absorbs enough light to meet the planet’s energy needs for a year.
The energy is free, and almost infinite. It is just a question of harnessing it.
“The circle of deserts embracing the globe present us with wonderful opportunities for both generating and transmitting solar energy,” he said.
He referred to a long-standing scheme, once dismissed as a crackpot theory, that the solar power of North Africa and the Middle East could not only supply these regions with all the power they need, but also, with wind from northern latitudes, most of Europe.
The idea of creating a network of solar power stations across the Arabian desert is drawing an increasing number of serious sponsors.
Prince Willem-Alexander has been joined by several German members of the European parliament, and even Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president who has emerged as a proponent of the Union for the Mediterranean which includes a major push for solar power.
What was fascinating about the exhibition that accompanied the Abu Dhabi summit was to see just how many new technologies are springing up.
Solar panels have been around for decades, but a flood of investment is generating so many new solar technologies that are bringing down the cost and improving the efficiency much faster than many thought.
Companies are building mirror troughs to concentrate the sun on to liquid in tubes, generating power from thermal sources. Others use mirrors to concentrate the sun’s rays 500 times before converting it to electricity through photovoltaic cells.
Old-fashioned crystalline silicon panels, which long failed to compete with power from fossil fuels, are falling in cost and rising in efficiency thanks to nanotechnology.
And thin-film solar panels will soon be manufactured on a scale large enough to make them a realistic alternative to fossil fuels, particularly in countries such as Spain and Germany which offer preferential “feed-in” tariffs to encourage power from these sources.
The Emirates may lag behind Germany, Spain and California in terms of implementing solar power, but it is working fast to catch up.
Abu Dhabi’s decision to pump US$15 billion (Dh55.09bn) into the Masdar initiative has thrust the company into the forefront of this fascinating research.
And the speed of progress has defied expectations.
The International Energy Agency, an arm of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), had forecast global energy production from solar to achieve an annual growth rate of 10 gigawatts by 2020. But experts at the Abu Dhabi summit said this growth rate would probably be achieved this year, a decade early.
Yesterday, the renewables industry even got its own international agency, called the International Renewables Energy Agency, and the Emirates is a founder signatory.
It will be interesting to see how this institution interacts with a group known as Desertec, which has until now acted as a gathering point for solar enthusiasts on a grand scale.
Deserts, known as places where a lack of water and excess of heat make human life difficult, could attract large populations in the future thanks to their solar potential, which could generate huge amounts of water and cooling power.
Solar enthusiasts have also got to work on the demand side of the energy equation.
Instead of seeing the traditional power demand curve as an immovable target, research into insulation, small-scale solar panels and cold storage offers amazing potential to reduce energy needs, particularly in hot climates such as the Emirates.
I hate to say it, but this solar thing could make a revolutionary of anyone. Even a royal.
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