DESERTEC-ASIA ROADMAP:
Asia 2050: A Pan-Asian Energy Infrastructure
Signup For DESERTEC-Asia Mailing List
Pipelines Vs. LNG
Costs/Benefits
About DESERTEC
Contact Us
Other DESERTEC Sites
DESERTEC-Foundation
DESERTEC-USA
DESERTEC-Australia
DESERTEC-UK
DESERTEC-Mediterranean
DESERTEC-Algeria
DESERTEC-India
"A global energy network makes enormous sense if we are to meet global energy needs with a minimal impact on the world's environment."
Al Gore,
environmental activist
"Access to diverse, reliable, affordable and clean energy is critical for sustainable growth."
G20 Communique
Pittsburgh
"The challenge now is to build efficient and seamless connections across Asia and to the rest of the world to create a more competitive, prosperous, and integrated region."
"Infrastructure For a Seamless Asia,"
Asian Development Bank,
2009
"The Asian region is well endowed with clean energy sources but faces constraints in developing them."
"Infrastructure For a Seamless Asia,"
Asian Development Bank,
2009
"We need to use different thinking in soliving problems than the thinking
we used when we created them."
Albert
Einstein
A Pan-Asian Energy Infrastructure
Imagine an interconnected, pan-Asian electricity and natural gas Infrastructure.
The system would distribute electricity from solar, geothermal, wind and wave energy from Australia to China. Natural gas and hydro would fill the gaps. The vision is big. So is climate change.
| The DESERTEC Initiative proposes building a network solar plants in North Africa |
| Cilck here to enlarge image |
In Europe, the DESERTEC Industrial Initiative proposes that a series of concentrating solar power plants in North Africa could power the region and export surplus electricity to Europe.
A similar network built in Asia would generate energy market efficiencies, spur innovation and increase energy security.
|
| A hemispheric electricity grid could connect Australia and China. |
| Click here to enlarge image |
Following this path, Asia could end up with networked electricity and natural gas backbone that would serve the region into the 22nd Century.
The plan involves connecting Asia through a 6,000-8,000 kilometer electricity and natural gas transmission system stretching from southern Australia to Japan and South Korea.
Australian surplus concentrating solar power, geothermal, wind and wave energy, along with natural gas, would flow northward to Indonesia. There, it would be joined by Indonesia's surplus natural gas, geothermal and hydro power.
The combined energy supplies, joined by Malaysian hydro, southeast Asian biomass and Mekong wind, would then be transmitted to China, Japan and South Korea through a 'non-discriminatory, common-carrier' infrastructure operated like a toll road.
Further north, China's Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang provinces could contribute solar and wind energy. In the East Asian Sea, networked offshore wind farms and wave and tide machines would contribute more energy. Regional natural gas and hydro energy supplies would 'load balance' the entire system in a hemispheric network managed as an highly-efficient whole.
Competitively accessible, non-discriminatory, low-emission energy generated and delivered through a regionally-interconnected, Pan-Asian energy infrastructure represents a market-based solution to climate change.
It would increase cross border trade. It would generate better investment price signals. It would encourage constructive multilateralism. It would deepen electrification in Asia's poorest areas, raising economic growth rates. It would create an flexible, adaptable infrastructure.
It would serve the region well.
Multilateral organisations ranging from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to the Asia-Pacific Energy Research Center (APERC) argue that increased Asian cross-border energy trade generats large net present value. Both advocate deeper interconnection of Asia's energy economy, and the ADB has gone so far as to recommend creation of a Pan-Asian Infrastructure Fund.
At the recent East Asian summit in Thailand, Japan and Australia all advanced new ideas on Pan-Asian economic and security cooperation. China and the US both want to participate.
With aging infrastructure, huge energy needs, the threat of climate change and global geopolitical power re-alignments creating new potential risks for conflict in Asia, now is the ideal time to bind the region -- the world's 21st Century economic engine -- to a 'common watering hole.'
History may judge the effort as the Asian equivalent of the 'European Coal and Steel Community' that set the stage in the 1950s for a half-century of wealth-building, peaceful pan-European political and economic integration.
To learn more, please read "A Pan-Asian Energy Infrastructure."
“One of the most important infrastructure projects we need is a whole new electricity grid.”
Barack Obama,
President,
United States
"No scientific breakthroughs are needed to achieve the reality of the Energy SuperGrid."
"National Energy Supergrid Workshop Report,"
US Department of Energy,
2002
"Now is the time to move even further toward a vision of a seamless Asia by building pan-Asian connectivity."
"Infrastructure For a Seamless Asia,"
Asian Development Bank,
2009
"The challenge now is to build efficient and seamless connections across Asia and to the rest of the world to create a more competitive, prosperous, and integrated region."
"Infrastructure For a Seamless Asia,"
Asian Development Bank,
2009
"Connecting national electricity grids and gas pipelines and harnessing common energy resources, such as rivers with hydroelectric potential, would boost regional energy trade.
It would reduce costs, increase diversity of supply, enhance energy security and benefit the environment."
"Infrastructure For a Seamless Asia,"
Asian Development Bank,
2009
"The benefits of upgrading and extending Asia’s infrastructure networks are substantial.
All countries in the region would benefit."
"Infrastructure For a Seamless Asia,"
Asian Development Bank,
2009