The Sahara desert, for centuries a barren ocean of desolate sand, could eventually become an oasis of electricity providing an abundance of solar power to Europe's power grid. This is the radical idea put forward by Arnulf Jaeger-Waldeau, at the Euroscience Open Forum in Barcelona, Spain. By just utilizing 0.3 percent of the light energy that falls on the region, Mr Jaeger-Wladau states that would provide enough electricity to meet all of Europe's needs.

The plan is admittedly ambitious, but it seems more than feasible. Scientists are calling for vast solar farms of photovoltaic panels to generate electricity by boiling water that would in turn convert to steam and generate massive turbines.

The Direct Current grid plan has even been endorsed by Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the UK and France's Premier, Nicholas Sarkozy, who have previously been critical on the reliability of such clean fuel solutions.

Scientists argue that though costly, harnessing the Sahara would be particularly effective because the sunlight in this area is more intense: solar photovoltaic (PV) panels in northern Africa could generate up to three times the electricity compared with similar panels in northern Europe.

Most of the cost would be the development of the grid and connecting the source of the energy and transporting the energy into a European network. Algeria has already begun to build it's own Solar/natural gas plant and plans to export 6,000 megawatts of solar power by 2010.

Spain and Portugal have also invested heavily in developing solar energy. The beauty solar farms is that once the system is set up the cost of generating the electricity will continue to drop.

Scientists working on the project concede that it would take $400 billion in capital and many years to generate enough solar energy from north Africa to power Europe, but envisage that by 2050 it could produce more than 100 GW.

Europe is well on the way to meeting it's collective goal of reducing overall energy consumption and CO2 emissions by 20 percent by the year 2020.

Perhaps the US should consider using the deserts in North America to do the same. There is little, or no adverse environmental effect, zero pollution and utilizes an abundantly renewable energy source negating the need to rely on despotic regimes of the Middle East. The Government could convert land set aside for 'corn-syrup' subsidies and encourage farmers to farm solar energy instead.

Seems like a bright idea whose time has come.