A shift to renewable forms of energy has been identified as a long-term solution to the looming problems of energy shortages and damage to the environment. Concentrated solar power is the only renewable energy form that offers both immediate and long term solution to Africa’s energy needs. Since solar thermal plant can feed its heat energy into conventional steam turbine, existing conventional steam power plants can be upgraded to hybrid plants by retrofitting them with solar concentrators as an additional solar steam generator, as well as using it to put back to use, steam power plants, that may have become non operational due to supply difficulties with oil or gas. The setting up of solar field would be go a long way in solving Africa’s energy need in the long term.

Studies by the Greenpeace and confirmed by another study that was commissioned by the Germany’s Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conversation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) and executed by the German Aerospace Centre (DLF) showed that solar electricity imports from solar thermal plants in North Africa and the Middle East is likely to become one of the cheapest sources of electricity in Europe, and that includes the cost of transmitting it to Europe. Not only does Europe see the generation of electricity from the sun energy in the Africa’s Sahara desert as a source of its future energy supplies and security, Europe has already established a Trans Mediterranean Energy Renewable Cooperation (TREC) between the countries of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa (EU-MENA). The construction of solar thermal power plants is already in progress in the Sahara. Germany and Spain lead in the drive for clean energy from the desert, other countries are now warming up to the idea of desert electricity. Even in Great Britain, a country that is rightly considered as being rather too far away from the Sahara desert, people are excited about the prospect of generating and Transmitting to the UK, clean and affordable sun-electricity from the Sahara.  

In Africa however, with the exception of North Africa, which is part of the EU-MENA desertec project, the rest of Africa appears to be either not aware of EU-MENA desertec project currently in progress at its backyard or is not interested in it, and worst still, do not understand the ramifications of being left out of Africa’s Sahara desertec project.  While most of the Europeans countries see the need to switch from atomic to renewable energy as demonstrated with current plan to generate electricity from the sun in Africa, Nigeria, a country in Africa has recently indicated interest in atomic energy from Europe. Nigeria, like the rest of Africa, is obviously oblivious of what it has: - enormous amount of sun energy, falling as sunshine on African deserts, arid sahel region and savanna grassland begging to be harnessed by anyone who has an appreciation for sustainable, clean, affordable and renewable electricity.  

Sustainable power in Africa can be based to a great extent on utility-scale renewable energy generation from the sun, as well as energies from wind and micro scale water turbines (instead of giant water dams). A well balanced mix of renewable energy sources with fossil fuel backup can provide affordable power capacity on demand through out Africa.

Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) technology also known as solar thermal power is the only solar based technology that is capable of providing utility scale electricity.

Solar thermal power plants are basically power plants, which generate electricity from high temperature solar heat. The difference between them and conventional power plants is that it is not coal, oil, or gas, but the sun that provides the energy that drives the turbines. A typical solar thermal power plant uses mirrors or other reflectors to concentrate sunlight to a surface to create heat which is then used to generate steam to drive conventional turbines to make electricity. Storage technology makes solar power available during unfavorable weather and at night. Applying storage technology ensures that the turbines can always run at full load and thus with optimal efficiency. That makes the power plant more profitable. Molten salt storage tank technology is proven and has been rated as reliable by common carriers. There is no problem in integrating such power plants in existing networks.

The construction of hybrid power plants is possible: since solar fields feed their heat energy into a conventional steam turbine, they can, for example, be integrated with ease in the relatively clean natural-gas-fired combined-cycle power plants of the latest generation. It is also possible to retrofit existing conventional steam power plants with solar concentrators as an additional solar steam generator. Hybrid technology means

Waste heat from the power-generation process may be used (in cogeneration) to desalinate seawater for the production of drinking water, and to generate thermal cooling that could benefit locals of warm places directly, or can be used for cooling tentacle used in trapping water vapor along the skies of Africa’s coastal areas (drink water production).

Apart from grid-connected applications (up to 100 megawatts), Concentrating solar power systems can be sized for village power supply (10 kilowatts).

CSP feasibilities: The technology is ready

Africa is the only region in the world with many sites which are considered either as good (Sahara, Kalahari and Namib deserts) or suitable for solar power installations (arid Sahel stepes and savanna Grassland which stretch from east to West Africa). With the exception of solar updraft tower, solar thermal power can only use direct sunlight, also known as Direct Normal Irradiation (DNI). This is the fraction of sunlight which is not absorbed or reflected by the atmosphere, i. e not deviated by clouds, fumes or dust in the atmosphere and that reaches the earth’s surface in parallel beams for concentration. This explains why solar thermal power plants are sited in regions with high direct solar radiation. A site or region is deemed suitable if it receives at least 2,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) of sunlight radiation per m² annually, while the best site locations receive more than 2,800 kWh/ m² / year. Ideal site regions, where the climate and vegetation do not produce high levels of atmospheric humidity, dust and fumes, include steppes, bush, savannas, semi-deserts and true deserts, located within less than 40 degrees of latitude north or south

• Availability of affordable and clean electricity the world over, would have a significant impact in cutting worldwide emissions of CO₂, and lead to significant improvement in the living quality.
• In Africa, where the dominant source of fuel in low-income African homes is wood, which women and children spend many hours in search of, The readily availability of affordable electricity would extend study hours for these schoolchildren, and free up time for other activities for women. Deforestation with associated land erosion and desertification would be controlled as there would be no need to cut down trees for fire wood.
• The production of drinking water either by the desalination of sea water using the waste heat from CSP plants, or by harvesting dew and fog from the sky using thermal cooling from CSP plants to cool tentacles for dew harvest.
• The shaded areas under the solar mirrors have the potential to support horticulture and thus solar field can be used as a frontline installation for reforestation of the deserts.
• Every year, each square kilometer of desert receives solar energy equivalent to 1.5 million barrels of oil. Multiplying by the area of deserts in Africa or in the world, this is several hundred times as much energy as the world uses in a year. Countries like Nigeria can move directly from being oil-rich to being solar-rich and the Northern Nigeria (and no longer the Niger delta) would now be the energy power house of Nigeria. Since desert electricity from solar thermal power plants located in the part of Northern Nigeria that lies in the arid Sahel zone considered as suitable for this project would be sold both locally in Africa and exported to Europe, to generate more revenue than what Nigeria currently earns from petroleum export.

For Africa, CSP technology offers more than electricity or drinking water:  as a matter of fact, CSP is going to go down on record as a singular case of technology that ushered in a rapid transformation of Africa. With sustainable electricity power supply as a major development catalyst, many African countries endowed with natural resources would have the electricity to sustain a new kind of processing industries where many natural resources previously exported unprocessed, would now be processed and exported as value added intermediates or end products.