Don't Stop Thinking about Tomorrow

Barriers to Trans-Mediterranean Trade in Solar Energy and What the European Commission Can do to Lower Them

This study, undertaken for the European Commissioner for Energy and the European Commissioner for Climate Action, assesses the concept of renewable energy imports from North Africa to Europe. Often referred to as "Desertec", this concept involves great amounts of renewable energy capacity - mainly solar - to be rolled out in the Sahara desert to generate clean electricty both for domestic markets as well as for export to Europe through high-voltage transmission across the Mediterranean Sea. Regarded by some as a great leap towards the European goals of energy security and climate change mitigation, others view the concept as a pipe dream or even a wrong turn of European energy policy. Rather than answering this question, the authors find that Europe is not yet even in the position to decide on the concept: a host of barriers are prohibitively high at this point. This paper disaggregates these barriers into three categories: directly related barriers that must be addressed as much as is needed to reach feasibilty of the concept, indirectly related barriers that are being worked at already for other reasons and therefore should not figure in the debate about the concept of trans-Mediterranean trade in renewable energy, and lastly a set of barriers that are overestimated and should not hold up progress. This paper concludes by matching each barrier with concrete policy recommendations to the European Union for the coming years.