Solar Power: in 2060 a third of global energy from the Sun

The Enel Group keeps growing and investing in solar power technologies. The subsidiary Endesa will develop a research project to demonstrate the technical and economic feasibility of Concentrating Solar Power generation with the Stirling dish technology, a thermodynamic cycle similar to that of a petrol-fuelled vehicle engine. Within the Solardis project, with investments worth 1.7 million euros, a demonstration concentrated solar thermal plant will be built near Endesa’s Guillena plant in Spain, to use this technology at a commercial level.

Enel is greatly investing in these solar power technologies, a field that, according to recent data published by the IEA, has extremely high growth perspectives, also in the long term. In the scenario illustrated by the IEA, solar photovoltaic and concentrated solar thermal will prevail in the 2060 energy mix, meeting a third of the overall global consumption and half of total electricity needs.

In order to achieve this scenario it will be necessary for governments worldwide to commit to climate change combat, the improvement of energy efficiency and the withdrawal of financial support for energy production from fossil fuels.

The transition toward a global energy market with predominant solar technologies will also be facilitated by demographic and economic factors. According to the IEA, by 2050 the global economic and demographic growth will mostly take place in the regions close to the Equator, where seven of the world’s nine billion inhabitants will live who, as time goes by, will have rising energy needs.

The Enel Group is already acting also in this direction, participating as a founding partner, through Enel Green Power, in Desertec, the project created in 2009 for the promotion of renewable energy in the desert areas of north Africa and the Middle East.

www.iea.org/Textbase/npsum/solar2011SUM.pdf