If coal is considered to be the key energy of the nineteenth century, the growth of its use was already paralleled by concerns regarding its depletion. It shows how harnessing the sun’s rays has been tied to the notion of extractivism, while questioning our responsibilities towards the production and consumption of energy in the time of climate change.Īugustin Mouchot’s solar engine depicted in La Science populaire, n° 131, August 17, 1882. An inquiry into the longue durée of solar projects in the Sahara is telling of our relationships with the desert.

Since then, a series of attempts to harness the sun’s rays, often presented as the wealth of the desert, have emerged and continue to shape our imaginaries. 2 This has particularly been the case with the Sahara, which was gradually conquered and occupied mainly by British, French, and Italian colonizers starting in the early nineteenth century. The greater the energy needs of industrial societies were, the more deserts were looked at with greedy eyes, and projects were undertaken to make them profitable. Long seen as vast territories unsuited for human occupation and unproductive, deserts began to be considered as potential resource suppliers in the industrial age, particularly of energy. Launched in 2009 and presented as a key endeavor for a low-carbon future, Desertec and the beginning of its realization through the Ouarzazate solar power station revive ancient ideas and evoke old attempts of harvesting the sun.

The idea is simple: harnessing a fraction of the solar energy received by the world’s largest desert would be enough to cover the needs of industrial societies. Initiated by a consortium of German think tanks and big companies, Desertec is presented as a project capable of revolutionizing energy production in the world. Ouarzazate’s impressive installation was celebrated by the media as the first step of a highly ambitious project named Desertec. There, a liquid is warmed up and collected at the core of the complex, where it fuels a turbine to produce electricity.

They are semi-parabolic mirrors which automatically rotate during the day to reflect the sun’s rays onto a thin tube placed at the center of the machine. In an irregular rocky landscape covered by brown dust, hundreds of bright strips emerged and imposed their strict geometrical order. In February 2016, the solar power station of Ouarzazate was inaugurated in Morocco, on the north-western edges of the Sahara.

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