European supergrid is way forward for cleaner energy.

A renewable energy supergrid that connects huge solar and wind farms across Europe and North Africa could be the answer to providing Europe with clean electricity.

Arnulf Jaeger-Walden of the European Commission's Institute for Energy told the Euroscience Open Forum in Barcelona that the Mediterranean has huge resources of solar and wind. But, he said: 'The current system is based on fossil fuels despite it being a tiny resource in this part of the world.'

The EU is looking at ways of moving away from fossil fuels and has committed to reducing carbon emissions by 20-30% of 1990 levels; reducing energy use by 20%; increasing energy efficiency by 30%; and using 20% renewables by 2020.

But according to Giovanni diSanti, director of the Institute of Energy at the Joint Research Centre: 'If we don't do something extraordinary and let energy go pretty much as it has been, we will never reach the targets.' He said the EU plans to put money and resources behind technologies like photovoltaics (PVs) to help ensure security of supply in Europe and meet climate change targets. The scientists are calling for the creation of a series of huge solar farms that produce electricity using either PVs or by concentrating the heat from the sun to boil water and drive turbines.

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Currently, the largest PV installation is in Leipzig, Germany, and the price at this installation is 3.25 [euro]/watt. 'If we could realise that in the Mediterranean, for example, in southern Italy, this would correspond to electricity prices at 15 cents/ kilowatt hour, which is currently less than what consumers are paying,' Jaeger-Walden said.

He said that solar power is perfect for peak demand use in the Mediterranean, which is between 11 and 2, when most of the cooking is done and air conditioning is in high demand. Every doubling of production could reduce the price by 20%. It is technically feasible, he said, but PV would have to grow 2030% every year.

The proportion of electricity produced using PVs will depend on technological advances, but has the potential to provide at least 3% of the EU's energy requirements by 2020-2030. Africa is also potentially a very valuable source of solar power and could form an important part of a transmediterranean grid. Sunlight in the Sahara, for example, is so intense that PV panels here would produce three times the electricity as similar panels in northern Europe.

'The political barriers may fall, but we will still need a lot of interaction between stakeholders in order to realise it; di Santi said. Getting electricity from Africa, potentially between Greece and Turkey and Morocco and Italy, would require a major re-structuring. Algeria has already started work on a vast combined solar and natural gas plant, which will begin production in 2010. Algeria aims to export 6000 megawatts of solar-generated power to Europe by 2020.

PVs is one of eight technologies highlighted in the Commission's Joint Research Centre's strategic energy technology plan. The plans also include fuel cells and hydrogen, nuclear power, clean coal, second-generation biofuels, wind and smart grids.