Desertec - ' "I was considered an oddball," says Knies.'

'...Knies was thinking in broader, global terms. Then he gave further impetus to his ideas when he devised the name, Desertec, three years ago.'

<blockquote>'The Man Behind the Vision

The Desertec vision was born in an apartment in Hamburg's Blankenese neighborhood. Gerhard Knies, 72, wearing a red plaid shirt and jeans, is as agile as a man 20 years younger. Knies worked as a physicist at the DESY particle accelerator in Hamburg, where he was interested in "what holds the world together at the most fundamental level."

A man like Knies is accustomed to asking big questions, and he loves big answers. The oil crisis and the Chernobyl disaster led him to ponder the vulnerability of industrial societies. He calculated that the Earth receives 10,000 times as much energy from the Sun as human beings need. Today he points to a presentation slide depicting a small red rectangle surrounded by the vastness of Africa and says that just three-thousandths of the world's 40 million square kilometers (15 million square miles) of deserts would be sufficient to supply solar energy to all of humanity -- which translates into a minuscule area of only 20 square meters per person.

Climate change lends new urgency to Knies' ideas. "The continued use of fossil energy is organized crime against the future," he warns. Knies designed conferences and extracted funding for studies from the German Environment Ministry. He managed to convince the German Aerospace Center and the then-president of the Club of Rome, Prince Hassan of Jordan. "I was considered an oddball," says Knies. "When I arrived in the world of solar power, there was an unpleasant atmosphere. People only ever thought about who could get funding from whom."

A Pact with the Devil

But Knies was thinking in broader, global terms. Then he gave further impetus to his ideas when he devised the name, Desertec, three years ago. Knies calls the initiative a "sustainability self-help group, because politicians can't do it. They're simply too slow."

It's simply impossible to save the climate with a few solar panels on school roofs, says Knies. "Global actors" have to become involved, he says, even if cooperating with the big energy suppliers also means entering into a "pact with the devil." This is why the Desertec Foundation was placed under the umbrella of the nonprofit Club of Rome, says Knies.

The organization isn't settling for just solving the world's energy problem. Desertec will provide more than electricity, says Max Schön, president of the German Association of the Club of Rome and the owner of a family business in the northern city of Lübeck. According to Schön, Desertec will also show that "the Middle East and the West, Islam and Christianity can work together." Desertec, says Schön, will create jobs and improve the economy of North Africa, thereby reducing the flow of economic migrants to Europe. And because solar plants also desalinate seawater, Schön argues, Desertec will also put an end to wars over water. The goal now, says Schön, is to convince industry that these are all worthwhile objectives.

Van Son, the head of the industry initiative, has already learned this lesson. He also raves that Desertec will attempt to "bring together peoples, cultures and governments," even those in southern Africa, because they too would want to be part of the project.

- Cordula Meyer, European Dream of Desert Energy Takes Shape, 05/27/2010</blockquote>