The Kingdom of Solar Energy

Saudi Arabia’s most ambitious project has been anounced by the Oil Prime Minister, Ali Alnaimi. This time it has nothing to do with oil–The world’s most vital source of energy at the present time.

An Article that has been written by WILLIAM PENTLAND, stated more information about this huge projct which will be the new source of energy that will keep Saudi Arabia in the lead of energy industry for centuries ahead and it will be providing the region a sustainable, source of energy–Solar energy. Let’s have a read on this worth-reading article:

In the wake of the first Gulf War, the U.S. Army assessedSaudi Arabia’s solar energy resource potential in a classified effort to determine how oil fires had affected the region.

The results were clear and surprising. In addition to being a vast petroleum repository, the desert nation was also the heart of the most potentially productive region on the planet for harvesting power from the sun. In other words, Saudi Arabia was the Saudi Arabia of solar energy.
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Sitting in the center of the so-called Sun Belt, the country is part of a vast, rainless region reaching from the western edge of North Africa to the eastern edge of Central Asia that boasts the best solar energy resources on Earth. With the cost of oil skyrocketing, this belt is attracting the attention of a growing number of European leaders, who are embracing an ambitious proposal to harvest this solar energy for their nations.
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While TREC’s plan is nowhere near becoming a reality, it seems inevitable that, in one form or another, someone will try to capitalize on the vast solar energy resources available in the sun-soaked countries of the Sun Belt.

While it is technically possible to convert sunlight into electricity anywhere, it costs far less to do so in areas that receive the most powerful forms of sunlight–sunlight that loses the least amount of radiant energy while moving from space to earth. The Sun Belt receives the lion’s share of this energy-rich sunlight.

While speaking at the Euroscience Open Forum in Barcelona, Spain, in July, Arnulf Jaeger-Walden, one of Europe’s leading energy authorities, said that less than 0.4% of the solar energy that falls on the deserts of North Africa and the Middle East would satisfy all of Europe’s energy needs.

The opportunity isn’t lost on Sun Belt countries. In March, Saudi Arabia’s oil minister, Ali al-Nuaimi, said the country hopes to become as expert with solar energy as it is with oil. While Saudi Arabia has long toyed with solar power for small projects, such as a 1980s “Solar Village” program to develop the use of the technology in remote regions, its aspirations appear to be growing.

“For a country like Saudi Arabia … one of the most important sources of energy to look at and to develop is solar energy,” al-Nuaimi told the French oil newsletter Petrostrategies. “One of the research efforts that we are going to undertake is to see how we make Saudi Arabia a center for solar energy research, and hopefully over the next 30 to 50 years we will be a major megawatt exporter.”

“In the same way we are an oil exporter,” said Saudi Arabia’s Ali al-Nuaimi, “we can also be an exporter of power.”