The politics of solar power

The largely positive outlook in the recent Renewable Energy Review from the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) is something to be welcomed. From an environmental point of view, it finally seems that, as wind farms spring up all around the UK and the number of solar PV installations increases exponentially, reality is at last beginning to measure up to what’s possbile in theory. Some may be less than happy with the recommendation that we make more use of nuclear power, but the fact is that the goal of an almost completely ‘decarbonised’ economy is beginning to look eminently achievable.

Domestic solar PV installations didn’t get much of a look-in in the CCC report. Instead, insofar as it addressed solar PV, the focus was on industrial scale Concentrated Solar Power (CSP), which appears not to be the most cost-effective option for the UK at the moment. However, the report did suggest importing energy from southern Europe or northern Africa, and featured the incredible statistic that CSP plants would need to use just 4% of the Sahara desert (still a vast area) to satisfy the demand for electricity throughout Europe in 2050.

In the long term, this has implications beyond climate change. Because it looks as though we’re just beginning to turn to new parts of the world to meet our energy requirements. As our needs grow, one only has to look at the oil-rich Middle-East to see that there are potentially serious political and economic consequences for those countries that are poor in most natural resources, but rich in solar radiation. And while that solar radiation may be far more plentiful than oil, that doesn’t necessarily mean that countries won’t start squabbling over those areas with most access to it. The reason is that one can well imagine that mankind will start to expand its energy consumption to meet the extra capacity. Time will tell whether we can work out how to distribute access to this suddenly valuable natural resource responsibly.