Statement by Katrin-Susanne Richter, Director of the non-profit DESERTEC Foundation, in response to the nuclear emergency in Japan:

We are following the current events in Japan and the tragedy for many Japanese people with sympathy and dismay. After the devastating effects of earthquakes and tsunami, there is now the added fear that more radioactive materials will be released from the stricken nuclear reactors. The nuclear emergency has brought the issue of safety of energy supplies into sharp relief. And we should not forget that there is still a pressing need to protect the climate by making deep cuts in CO2 emissions, and soon.

The DESERTEC Concept "Clean Power from Deserts" offers a solution that can be implemented all around the world, and that provides plentiful supplies of safe and clean energy using technologies that are available today: Solar power plants and wind farms in deserts do not present any risk to the population, even if there is an unforeseen disaster. By linking up a multitude of different types of renewable energy sources – some of which provide power on demand – across long distances, the DESERTEC Concept offers high levels of robustness and resilience in energy supplies.

All over the world, there are deserts that are drenched in sunshine. So it's not only the Mediterranean region and Europe that will be able to take advantage of clean power from deserts: The DESERTEC Concept can be implemented on all inhabited continents of the Earth. In East Asia, for example, both China and Mongolia have large areas of desert that would be suitable for concentrating solar-thermal power plants. The energy potential offered by these desert areas would be enough not only to supply those two countries with CO2-free electricity; there would be plenty left over to supply neighbouring countries as well. One of our next planned projects will comprise studies to verify the technical, political and economic feasibility of implementing DESERTEC in several different regions of the world, particularly in Greater East Asia. The DESERTEC Foundation’s mission is to implement DESERTEC globally and as quickly as possible, as our growing world population needs plentiful and secure supplies of energy, and a stable climate, to survive and prosper in the future.