Breeding Silicon and Solar Power in the Middle of the Desert
The forbidding sands of the Sahara might seem an unusual place for farming. But if you're farming silicon to make solar panels, the conditions in the Sahara are more or less optimal. At least, that's the thinking behind the Sahara Solar Breeder Project. The plan, a joint project proposed by Japanese and Algerian universities, would use the desert's immense supplies of sunlight and sand to "breed" solar power plants and solar panel factories. The idea is to start with a small number of silicon manufacturing plants that will churn out the silicon needed to manufacture solar panels. Once those panels are operating, they can be used to power the silicon plants, which in turn churn out more silicon and solar panels, which in turn can be used to power more silicon and solar energy plants. And so on. By 2050, the universities envision breeding enough silicon and solar by 2050 to...