The grid across the Med and beyond

(Disclaimer – this post was written on holidays and I’ve revived it now – could be a case of too much sun in every sense)
Finally another pan-European story that caught my eye this week (great thing about being on hols, having the international editions of papers like the Guardian and FT double bonus time to read them) concered some kind of cross-continental energy grid which would hook up everything from geo-thermal geyser power in Iceland to massive solar farms powered by the Saharan sun in North Africa. Apparently the proposal has been brought to the table quite recently by scientists and energy boffins and promises cheap, clean and renewable energy sources to supply all of Europes needs into the future. Brown and Sarkosy have given the thumbs up it seems and the next steps are an advanced pilot project. The grid idea is not particularly new but tapping into the Saharan solar potential would seem to be. I became a bit cynical reading the detail as it appears the European contributions to the project are really backup sources (such as the wind energy off UK and geo-thermal as mentioned) but that the Lions share comes from the dark continent. Just got me wondering was this some other new form of colonialism, our African friends “joining” the European community when they have something to give – a lot to give, in fact a lot more than the rest put together in this particular project, and I just hope they’re getting a decent quid pro quo out of it. Maybe I think too much..