There are big scale solar projects that simply dazzle the imagination. Take for example the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, which is a $2.2 billion solar thermal power project currently under construction in the California Mojave Desert. The The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, is 40 miles southwest of Las Vegas, and will generate 392 megawatts of power. Google which recently pulled out of the deal after investing $168 million was one of the first investors along with the Department of Energy which has over a billion dollars in the deal. It’s massive in scope. It will produce for 1400 jobs at it’s peak and cut 13.5 million tons of carbon dioxide from the sky over it’s thirty year life expectancy.
Then there’s Desertec, an ambitious solar power project, that is to start building its first power plant next year, a 500 megawatt facility in Morocco costing up to 2 billion euros ($2.8 billion), the project lead told a German newspaper.”Construction is to start in 2012,” Ernst Rauch of Munich Re (MUVGn.DE), initiator of the Desertec Industrial Initiative (DII), told Sueddeutsche Zeitung in an interview.
Founded by mostly German companies in 2009, the 400 billion euro Desertec project will use mirrors to harness the sun’s rays to produce steam and drive turbines for electricity generation in the Sahara region within the next decade and then transmit the power to energy starved Europe. The first phase of the 12-square-kilometre Moroccan complex will be a 150 MW facility costing up to 600 million euros that will take two to four years to build.
But while these two utility scale projects go wide; EnviroMission a developer of solar tower systems is working in La Paz Arizona will build the tallest solar building in the world. It is the first of two such towers to be completed in 2015. Read more
Survival of the Fittest” Mentality at UN Climate Talks
