Concentrated Solar Power to Electrify 25% of World

By 2050, vast desert-based facilities that concentrate solar rays could be providing as much as 25 per cent of global electricity requirements, a new report compiled by various sources has stated.  The implementation of solar energy technology on this kind of scale could also save huge quantities of carbon from being released and potentially open up thousands of employment opportunities.

While photovoltaic technology acts to convert solar power straight into electricity, CSP, or ‘Concentrated Solar Power’, involves the use of mirrors.  These mirrors direct solar rays onto bodies of water, creating steam from which electricity can be derived.  What’s more, while cloudy skies do not stop photovoltaic technology from working effectively, CSP technologies need consistently sunny conditions, which is why desert areas are considered the optimum location to set them up in.

CSP Capacity

As of December 2008, overall global CSP capacity stood at about 430 Megawatts. 

The new report was pulled together by representatives of Greenpeace, SolarPACES (an offshoot of the International Energy Agency) and the European Solar Thermal Electricity Association.  According to Greenpeace’s Sven Teske, global investment into developing and implementing CSP technologies was on course to hit the two-billion Euro mark in coming months.   This, he added, could climb to over 11 billion Euros next year and, by 2030, CSP could be making up seven per cent of total global capacity.  Two decades later, investment could be standing at over 90 billion Euros, at which point annual CO2 emissions savings would have surpassed the two billion tonnes mark, and nearly two million new jobs would have been generated.

“Due to the feed-in tariff in Spain and a few schemes in the US, this technology is actually taking off and we wanted to highlight that we have a third big technology to fight climate change — wind, photovoltaics and now CSP”, Teske explained.

Concentrated Solar Power Technologies

Spain’s widespread adoption of Concentrated Solar Powered technologies makes it the current global leader – its government having given the go-ahead for the build of over 50 solar facilities, with a view to having CSP capacity exceed two Gigawatts by 2015.  What’s more, Spanish solar energy firms are a significant player in the export market.

The report assessed what might happen in three, varying instances of CSP growth.  In one, investment in and development of CSP technologies remained static while, in the second, growth carried on as it has been doing.  The third scenario, however, explored the impact of CSP growing, financially and politically unhindered, in which case global investment could potentially reach 147 billion Euros per annum by 2050 and capacity, one-and-a-half million Gigawatts.

A further focus of the report were the fast-paced improvements being made to CSP technologies themselves, including the incorporation of storage facilities into solar plants giving them the capability of working 24-7.