At first glance the difference could not be greater. The Hamburg-based Lichtblick company has proposed a revolutionary scheme for energy production. In a few years, miniature power stations could at once produce electricity and heat in hundreds of thousands of homes. Whenever needed, the electricity will be fed into an intelligent grid and the heat will be either used or stored. For this Lichtblick has coined the term “swarm electricity” – a great number of autonomous energy citizens will be the backbone of future supply.
The Desertec consortium on the other hand plans to build huge solar power stations in the African desert, and corporations such as Deutsche Bank, E.ON, and RWE contemplate investing billions. A new grid traversing the Mediterranean is meant to connect Africa with Europe.
Both concepts are fascinating. Yet, does one not have to worry that the likeable decentralised approach will once again be overpowered and sidelined by big money and its centralised structures? Will the greenwashed power of energy giants and high street banks not push out such forms of energy that are not only clean, but have also been produced independently?
Those are points made by Hermann Scheer, president of the Eurosolar association. He castigates Desertec as a project that will only reinforce the megalomaniac structures within the energy sector and obstruct the, to date, successful expansion of renewable energies in Germany.
Lichtblick’s concept of swarm electricity is a boost for decentralised structures. When the Hamburg-based company announced that its miniature power stations will go on sale for 5,000 Euros, “we where inundated with requests,” thus Brigitte Rosenboom. She is a customer adviser at the Lichtblick headquarters located in a former brewery near Hamburg’s port and receives calls from potential customers asking for information concerning the new power stations.
“Many people want to buy the machines straight away,” says Rosenboom. There are many motives: Some customers want to take up the offer in order to cheaply replace their ageing oil-fired heating system, others like the idea to outwit traditional suppliers such as Vattenfall. Up until now, Lichtblick has received around 28,000 requests concerning their miniature power stations. All of them received a sobering reply: The machines will only go on sale in 2010. At what point in time cities other than Hamburg can be supplied remains to be seen.
Regarding possible competition from Desertec, Lichtblick CEO Gero Lücking is sanguine: “We have a business model – they have a concept,” thus referring to the production of electricity in the desert as something far in the future. For Lücking the two concepts are all but incompatible: “Electricity from the desert does not challenge our plans.”
Max Schön of the Desertec Foundation’s advisory board concurs. The entrepreneur from Lübeck, an activist in many ways, does not think the two approaches are at loggerheads. His central argument: “Even the stage projected for the year 2050 by the German Aerospace Center assumes that the power stations in the desert would only provide 17% of the EU’s energy consumption.” 80% of the green energy produced would be used by African countries – among other things to desalinate salt water and improve water supply.
Considering Desertec’s target to import 17% of electricity, Lichtblick CEO Lücking’s calculation is simple: “The remaining part, that is 83% of electricity consumption, can be supplied by other and local providers of regenerative energy.” This, according to Lücking, makes it clear that the two concepts are complementary.
Nikolaus Supersberger at the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy agrees. For him the “polarisation between decentralised and centralised is difficult and untenable.” Many energy experts regard the supposed antagonism as a vain war of words. According to Supersberger, to tackle climate change and stop global warming will take great efforts. Thus, the focus has to be on producing a sufficient amount of clean energy and on replacing fossil fuels.
Yet, one has to be realistic and keep in mind that the corporations, which today dominate the energy sector, will not just go away but will try to cut in on lucrative future deals. In addition, there will be ample capital in the order of several hundred billion Euros on the financial markets looking for profitable investments to back. Those are the dimensions aimed at by the Desertec Foundation and the recently founded Desertec Industrial Initiative, which, among other things, will oversee the construction of some reference projects.
Max Schön denies that the Desertec project is about centralised energy production. With their research, development, and planning the foundation and the presently participating companies would create the foundation for further companies to join. “This is no centralised plant,” says Schön, “there will be many power plants based in a number of countries and using various technologies.” The transmediterranean power grid of the future will create the possibility to connect to it at many a different point.
That may be as it is. The major energy corporations, banks, and technology companies will certainly succeed in shaping Desertec according to their wishes. Only the future will show what will then remain of other particiapting companies.
For the time being many crucial questions remain unanswered. One central point is voiced by the Wuppertal Institute’s Supersberger: “A major challenge is regulation.” Technically and politically it may be possible to erect solar and wind power plants in the desert and build an energy grid traversing the Mediterranean. However, who will be in control? What institution will make sure that the “many power plants” Schön is talking about will be able to feed their electricity into the European-African grid at a fair price? What network agency will supervise the transit fees and create competition – even against the interests of E.ON, RWE, and Deutsche Bank.
Even just within Germany, the energy market is difficult to control. On the European level such efforts are only just beginning. This, one has to keep in mind, in order to appreciate what a Herculean task it will be to construct a transcontinental grid for the benefit of as many countries, companies, and customers as possible.
Meanwhile Desertec’s Schön supposes that the future structure of the energy sector will be very different from what we have today. “New actors are at the ready,” says Schön. And he points at the declared intent of communications giants such as Cisco and Google to invest in intelligent power grids.
Against the background of such developments the old question of “centralised or decentralised” may indeed become obsolete. Maybe E.ON will find a real competitor in Google. To ensure that technological and economic power do not give rise to monopolies, governments south and north of the Mediterranean will have to supplement Desertec with a model for regulation. Companies do not care for that – it is a task politics will have to tackle. Max Schön admits: “The question of regulation is still open.”
Green New Deal / Great Transformation
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