Yo can I borrow your charger?

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Welcome back to The Strawman, the daily climate newsletter that puts the sus in sustainability (jk 👀)

Today we’re talking about the place where the sun is always shining - that’s right baby, the Sahara desert. The sun is a big part of the whole solar energy thing that everyone’s excited about. A place with nearly 4,000 hours of sunshine a year? Sounds like a story if I ever heard one.

Let’s dive in.

You got room for desert?

You know what the world’s biggest desert is great for? Sand castle competitions. Beyond the obvious use cases for a massive sandbox, the Sahara could also double up as part of the solution for climate change.

See, the Sahara desert gets so much solar energy that capturing just 1-2% of it would be enough energy to power the whole world.

Sounds great right?

Well - there’s more to consider:

• Solar panels aren’t 100% efficient - so you end up losing 20-50% of the energy received by the sun during the conversion to electricity

• Storing energy is expensive - even if you could capture all the energy coming down from the sun, you then have to store it in batteries

• Moving electricity around requires infrastructure - it’s all well and good capturing all this energy from the sun, but you need to get it to places where it can be used. Know where there are pretty limited use cases for electricity? The desert.

All of this means that while the Sahara seems like a solution, in reality things ain’t quite that simple.

I’ll pay anything just get me the energy

You know that one extension lead you have at home that’s like 23m long but is super helpful when you’re doing the gardening? Turns out the UK wants one of those, but for solar power.

That’s essentially the goal of the Xlinks project - the UK basically heard all of the above arguments against solar energy from the Sahara and has decided to ignore them.

Xlinks would turn a chunk of the Sahara into a massive wind and solar farm - with over £18bn being spent to build all of it, including battery storage and cable transportation.

Despite delays, the project has secured a big pay day from investors in the Middle East, as well as Octopus Energy in the UK, raising a series A to bring this all to life.

If they pull it all off?

They would provide 8% of Britain's electricity, powering 7 million homes by 2030. The best part is the energy would be even cheaper than some nuclear sources, which is usually the sticking point for solar energy.

Let’s hope the sun keeps shinin’ - see ya tomorrow.

The Strawman