There is a lively discussion about energy from the desert at this recent Renewable Energy World article that claims it is not necessary to deal with global warming, running at 38 comments right now (some of them from me).
It is interesting to note that some people are opposed to large-scale desert projects because they want to protect desert wildlife. Some of them assert that “industrial solar”, as they call it, is not able to compete with rooftop solar (their preferred technology) on the market.
As I noted in comments on that thread, actually Desertec would use less than one percent of Northern Africa desert area to deliver about 700 TWh per year to Europe. See the article blogged here for reference.
That obviously means that there will plenty of desert space left for desert tortoises and other forms of wildlife the environmentalists are concerned about.
On the other hand, leaving the deserts alone would mean that those 700 TWh of low carbon electricity would not materialize. That in turn will make climate change worse, with the related problem of more species extinction.
As to the claim that rooftop solar is more competitive on the market than large-scale projects:
For one, the North African and Middle East desert zones have much better solar resources than Germany (which is about as good as Alaska). It obviously makes sense to invest money in solar mostly where the sun shines.
While there will be some added costs from needing power lines, the economy of scale does mean lower cost per kWh for large-scale projects.
And finally, many of the desert projects will come with thermal storage, giving the ability to balance loads, which is important for a system approaching 100% renewable sources.
That does not necessarily mean that it is impossible to get to 100% renewable without a desert contribution. However, that makes the task more difficult. And it might take a decade or two more of time.
Eventually, all energy will come from renewable sources. And a large part of that will be from solar. The trick is making it happen fast enough to keep the amount of global warming locked in for a thousand years at that point of time down as much as possible.
Finally, I recall that in California, people actually living in desert zones seem to support large-scale solar projects, as blogged before.
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