In five years African green energy will be imported to the EU

Said European Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger at a meeting in Algiers to step up the process to integrate electricity markets in the Maghreb and these markets into the European market

Within the next five years, Europe will import its first solar-generated electricity from Africa. The latter was announced by European Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger, who met with Energy ministers from Algeria, Marocco and Tunisia  on June 20 in Algiers. The meeting was held to step up the integration process of electricity markets in the Maghreb, as a  first step towards the full integration of these markets into the European one. 

"I think - said the Commissioner – that in the next five years the European market will import electricity generated from the first plants operating in Northern Africa. Initial volumes will come from small pilot projects and the capacity will amount to some hundreds of MW. Afterwards, the amount of electricity in Africa will go up to thousands of MW, as the Desertec solar scheme will come on stream. Oettinger added that this project, which is a vision for the next 20 to 40 years, will require investment of hundreds of billions of euros to integrate the entire potential generation of thousands of MW from wind and solar power, but it will be essential to achieve the EU 2020 renewable targets.”
Some environmental groups warned that the inter-connectors constructed between North Africa and Europe could instead be used to import electricity generated from conventional coal and gas fired plants. Regarding the latter, the Commissioner replied: "We need ways to ensure that this does not happen, but this should not undermine our project. I also believe it is technologically possible to monitor electricity imports from Africa to the EU that are conveyed by inter-connectors and establish if they come from renewable sources or  conventional plants.

(June 2010)