International Law

Energy from the Desert

By Karl-Friedrich Lenz

(First posted June 4th 2006, at my “Hydrogen Mongolia” Blog, republished.)

This post starts a new category with the title “Energy from the Desert”. There I will discuss the 2004 book with that title edited by Kosuke Kurokawa. It is the result of research in the framework of the International Energy Agency, more specifically in the Agency’s Photovoltaic Power Systems Programme. The book is $125 at Amazon, but there is a summary PDF-file available.

I got the idea of studying the possibility of large-scale energy and hydrogen production in the Gobi desert from that book. Therefore, I want to devote some space to discussing it in detail on this blog. To kick the discussion off with this post, I want to discuss one of the recommendations of the summary (on page 2). The authors recommend that

desert-bound countries reevaluate their deserts not as potential problem areas but as vast and profitable (future) resources for sustainable energy production, recognizing the positive influence on local economic growth, regional anti-desertification and global arming.

That is because, as they state on page 9,

The Gobi desert area between the western part of China and Mongolia can generate as much electricity as the present world primary energy supply.

As I have discussed in this other post, there is about $100 billion of gold and copper estimated to be waiting at the Oyu Tolgoi site alone. I don’t know what the dollar value of the world primary energy supply is. But it sure should be more than $100 billion. In other words, once you understand the potential for large scale energy generation from the desert, deserts become valuable assets. However, just as with the mining projects, that is only true if you are able to actually realize the potential of that powerful idea.

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Update:

The second edition of that book was published in 2007.

Full post as published by Lenz Blog on March 19, 2011 (boomark / email).