More technocopian nonsense - Australia has more than enough problems of its own transitioning to a sustainable energy system without getting into schemes involving Asia.

The Europe/North Africa scheme will very likely not get off the drawing board.I can't see the Europeans being stupid enough to spend billions on infrastructure in foreign countries which are known for their instability and hostility to the West only to be the victims of sabotage or being held to ransom.

This would be one of the reasons that the Desertec scammers are now in Australia pushing their spurious wares.

Let's have some sense of reality in discussions about energy.

I tend to agree with thirra. Australia should be conserving natural and coal seam gas, not flogging it cheaply a.s.a.p. as part of official policy. Gas is what will keep trucks on the road and tractors on the farm when diesel is $5 a litre. I do think that Australia should build several high capacity HVDC lines creating a strong national grid. That might tip the economics of desert coast wind and inland solar, also geothermal if they can get it to work. The startup money should come from halving the $A43bn fibre optic cable budget in favour of wireless or satellite internet (which I have).

When those kind of piggy banks are exhausted I still doubt that renewables will have made much dent on Australian coal emissions. We won't have any surplus electricity to export even in a reciprocal deal. Coal and LNG exports are already doing that in batch mode not continuous. I'm suspicious of gas pipes and power cables that cross language zones or the seabed since they are easy targets. Basslink underwater HVDC joined Tasmania to mainland Australia. It was supposed to export hydro power but ended up mainly importing coal power for zinc and aluminium smelters.

I guess it boils down to the fact that with 22m people Australia's large resources still need conserving. Dare I suggest that Asia has too many people for its resource base.

The one basic principle I apply to projects like this is that (in a broadly historical perspective) resource constraints within a system tend to work themselves out by decreasing the complexity of the system. As in many other otherwise good ideas, this is a vast increase in complexity to a system suffering resource constraints.

Not that its a bad idea, but its unlikely to go anywhere.

It seems to me that when China is in extreemis they will come and take whatever energy they like.
Australia is Terra Nullius through Chinese eyes.
We might as well give it away as have it taken.
I prefer consenting sex to rape.

There are a great many technical obstacles to overcome to build something like this but there is also the small problem of needing consumers on the other end to ultiamlty pay for it. Delivering electricty to someones house is pointless if he cannot afford the appliances that convert the electricity into something useful, like heat for cooking or light, or 110 dB of thumping AC/DC tunes to excite the neighbours.

Electrifying Asia to the same extent as the West, would induce perhaps the biggest consumer boom at a scale that would dwarf even the vomit inducing gluttony we see in the West today. The call on mineral resources would be absolutley mindboggling, along with demand for food and all the other trappings that go with high consumerism. That being the case, I can see that it might just have a chance of getting up.

I don't think this is technically impossible, particularly with advances in electrical transmission efficiency.

I suppose it boils down to how much the Asian economies are willing to pay for something like this, but I can see these kinds of supergrids being a necessity as the world seeks to harness abundant but widely distributed renewable resources.

Seems great, but kind of pointless though at this point, no? Isn't it enough to just get these plants producing and supplying local/national energy? In the nearterm, all they will be doing is displacing FF demand growth... I don't see anyone shutting down existing coal plants anytime soon.

Great comments everybody. DESERTEC-Asia's aim is to get people thinking on a larger scale, so I'm happy!

I have a few observations on the overall direction of the posts.

To you Australian resource nationalists (ie 'we need to conserve our gas for ourselves'), you haven't been reading the newspapers. Australia is ALREADY flogging off off its natural gas cheap to Asia. All a Pan Asian Energy Infrastructure will do is potentially provide a cheaper, more future proof route to market than LNG. Nothing wrong with that.

Next: yes, Australia has large gas supplies. But these are going to become less relevant after 2050 as renewables take over the load. Ergo, best to sell the supplies now while people want to buy them. Why hoard a progressively obsolete resource? Even if Australia ramped up natgas sales hugely, it will still be left with huge supplies and fewer buyers after 2050. Hoarding is thus dumb.

The other point I think gets missed is that some posters assume the whole system will be built at once off one big blueprint. It wouldn't. It would be built in stages. For those of you who say that Australia should expand its own HVDC system first, I totally agree. DESERTEC-Asia's point is to outline the the larger vision that incremental steps (like these) taken today can lead to. Ditto for Asia. They can invest in their own needed energy infrastructure upgrades with an eye to making them pluggable into a future interconnected Asian system using common standards. What's wrong with that?

Pundits argue the 21st Century may be marked by wars over resources. If 'Asia' is tethered to a common delivery system ('a common watering hole'), it increases multilateral interdependence. That reduces the benefits of brinksmanship by individual parties and increasing the 'positive sums' to be gained by cooperation. Separately, a common carrier infrastructure will lead to greater energy supply through more efficient investment price signalling and more effcient transport to market.

Thanks thanks thanks everyone for all your comments. I haven't head anything here I haven't heard before, but I do like the passion. That's the first step to fixing things!

I think the most ludicrous statement so far is the claim that the natural gas has to be mined and sold before it becomes obsolete. Natural gas, oil and even coal will never become obsolete, if anything they will become much more valuable over time and any nation having these resources should think carefully about preserving there stockpiles for the future.

At this time at least in north america there is a glut of natural gas with canadian producers scaling back due to market conditions. Further investment in production is unlikely until the market improves.

Wind generation as well as solar thermal projects main problem here in the us is the transmission grid not extending out to the locations where the generation is optimal. As to who pays for the infrastructure seems to be the sticking point for now.

okay i didnt bother to explain my statement as to why oil and natural gas will never become obsolete.

just think of alternative uses besides generating electricity, ie. feedstock for fertilizers, plastics, dyes the list goes on probably endlessly.

it doesn't matter if we replace every one the of the existing coal, nat gas or oil fired power plants with some other technology there will still be myriad of uses for petrochem.

By way of throwing another wet blanket onto the speculation of a renewable future, there isn't enough rare earth metals to make the magnets required for the windmills required to replace the current grid. This is a resource problem for any technology that would require massive numbers of magnets in generators and alternators.

I was reading that the solar plant being built in the mojave desert (near los angeles) has a problem with water supply. The usage is to keep the mirrors clean and the quantity required is not readily available. Just another example of technology meets resource constraints.

There was a project design planned for Australia awhile back a large tower would draw in the surrounding air up the tower driving generating fans before the air exited out the top. I suspect the sheer size of the tower and the amount of materials required to build it gave pause.

Personally I like what the residents of hurricane prone regions of florida are doing, small solar powering dc freezers and lights.

Is humanity high tech enough yet?
Take the LiFePO4 battery for example. Just 18 mm of it "glued" to the back of solar panels covering the same amount of space used for roads and highways, would do the trick IF robotically mass produced on the largest scale possible (and well insulated?). That is, storing a total global electric supply for at least a few days. However, imagine the nations using it as "the solution" only to invent a better, easier to build on a multi-terrawatt scale, longer lasting (with more cycles than the 2,000 to 8,000 or so), battery solution, or even, a cheaper mechanical or thermal storage approach (which is doubtful since "the mechanical" has already been perfected already)...

Do we have time to bet on pure research (and the nasty proprietary issues that follow? Perhaps this is a question for the super computers!

Do we really have a rare earth problem that can stop the whole (really efficient) electric car and turbine future? If so, we will have to sacrifice the (really good wind) turbines to mechanical ones that pump air into bladders deep below in the oceans.

If we are to "do" RE, we must have overcome problems with free trade and such.
~Perhaps this would better ease social tensions~
Big, giant green grids are a must, (I would think). Distributed systems, it seems, would be better if they could share with the rest of the world as they will be cast in intermittantcy too. I like largescale solar and wind. Sure, they may not be perfect but they will evolve into more efficient, (almost) non carbon powerplants capable of exponentiating past the oil economy IF the nimby's and lawyers don't kill 'em off before they can afford the robotic parts factories!

Congress should declare null and void any such "show stopping" litigation (as we could use the install jobs too)!