Desert 'riches' the key to our future?

At a recent symposium in Alice Springs, Australian physicist Dr Barrie Pittock presented a vision of the nation's deserts as vast power plants providing clean, renewable energy not only for Australia, but also for Asia, at the same time creating indigenous employment opportunities in remote communities.

With Australia having some of the highest sunlight intensities anywhere, Dr Pittock estimates that 'an area no larger than 50 kilometres square could meet the nation's entire electricity needs', citing new developments in solar thermal, hot rock geothermal and tidal energy.

While the construction of high-voltage, low-loss direct current (DC) transmission lines to industrial and urban centres would be relatively costly, they would provide the capability for Australia to deliver energy across thousands of kilometres via cheaper buried and undersea cables--stretching to Asia--with minimal losses.

Dr Pittock says installing low-loss powerlines to deliver renewable energy is cheaper and less exposed to safety and financial risks than developing nuclear reactors or building the next generation of coal-fired power stations which rely on the success of geosequestration.

At the same event, an advisor to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) proposed that scientists turn to deserts and the natural phenomenon of biomimicry to find solutions to environmental problems.

John Scanlon cited the unique properties of the Namibian Desert beetle, which 'can teach us how to recycle steam from cooling towers, based upon the way this creature harvests water from fogs.'

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'Then there is Africa's resurrection plant, which dehydrates itself when there is no rain and then rehydrates again after rain.

'Somehow this plant can go into a state where it is dehydrated and it stays alive, and biomimicry is looking at producing vaccines (for poorer countries) that can stay alive without refrigeration based upon the plant's properties.'