The vast Sahara Desert in Africa is inhospitable to plants and animals, but quite suitable for movie sets such as Luke Skywalker’s desert home planet of Tatooine in Star Wars. But it could be home to so much more. It’s so sunny and hot in the Sahara all year round that scientists have started to suggest that a small part of the large desert could turn into one giant solar power project capable of powering Europe and even the world. Theoretically, the Sahara desert has huge potential to be the world’s biggest renewable energy source. But in practice, there are technological, regulatory, environmental, and political hurdles to turning the Sahara into one giant solar park. According to Amin Al-Habaibeh, Professor of Intelligent Engineering Systems at the Nottingham Trent University, the total solar energy available in the Sahara desert exceeds 22 billion gigawatt hours (GWh) annually. To put this in […]