Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
1.1.1.2 Other Solar Thermal Projects
Although “Desertec” represents almost the whole industry dealing with solar
energy, there are other companies as well. One company that has the ability to
become a serious competitor is Transgreen. Transgreen is a new solar project and
was founded in 2010. From the very beginning, there was a major difference
between Transgreen and Dii. While Transgreen is a political initiative of the French
government, Dii was an economic initiative in which national governments have no
direct involvement.
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To date, Transgreen has not established a homepage or implemented any of its
projects. It has almost completely disappeared from the newspapers, meaning that
the latest news stems from 2011.
1.1.2 The MENA Side
It is necessary to remember that a CSP can only exist within the “sun belt”, which
encompasses most of the MENA region and only small parts of Europe.
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1.1.2.1 The Middle East and North Africa
The Middle East is currently unable to host a large scale solar thermal project. The
application of the Shari
a is not a problem in itself, but leads to reluctance on the
part of many Western investors due to their limited knowledge of it. Furthermore,
the Israel-Palestine Conflict and the Syrian civil war are ongoing security issues
within the area. Another problem that this region deals with is terrorism. All these
issues are also reflected within the Organization for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD) Country Risk Classification, where countries from the
Middle East, such as Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Israel, are ranked higher
than countries located in North Africa.
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What is more, neither the African Union (AU) nor any Regional Economic
Community (REC) can be an active partner for the implementation of a solar
thermal power plant as well. Besides the internal problems,
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still prevalent African
'
45
FAZ.Net (
2014a
).
46
Sch¨fer (
2008
), 11 (12 and 14); Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft e.V. (
2005
), 80; Sch¨ssler
(
2008
), 221 (223).
47
The OECD ranking goes from 0 to 7, whereas 0 is no risk and 7 very high risk: Middle East
countries: Iraq 7, Iran 7, Lebanon 7, Jordan 5, Israel (0 without prejudice to the status of the Golan
Heights, East Jerusalem and Israeli settlements in the West Bank under the terms of international
law/Rating of 3 in 2010) on the other hand North African states: Morocco 3, Algeria 3, Tunisia
4 (Germany 0), in: OECD (
2014
).
48
Makinda and Okumu (
2008
), 6; Soest (
2008
), 2; Schmidt (
2008
), 5.
