DESERTEC - European Strategic Aspects

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject Politics - Topic: European Union, grade: 1,0, Zeppelin University Friedrichshafen (Global Governance), course: Politics, Polity and Policy, language: English, abstract: Dealing with the origins of and reasons for the development of political strategies one

should not miss the opportunity to analyze the strategic dimension of the DESERTEC

project from the European perspective. Both the worldwide discussion on energy

supply and climate change as well as the urgent need for regional diplomatic and

social stability builds the fundament for DESERTEC which is a project realizing the

installation of solar power plants in the deserts of Middle East and Northern Africa

and the export of produced energy as element of the European electricity supply.

By implementing that project Europe would be able to affect three strategic problems

simultaneously: The dependency on the fossil resources oil and gas and the

countries supplying them, problems concerning the handling of climate changes as

well as the strengthening of partnerships with states of the Middle East and Northern

Africa and by that promoting regional stability.

The European Union is in need of diversification of its energy supply portfolio in order

to be prepared to fulfill international climate protection agreements and reduce the

dependencies from Russian gas and Arabian Oil. Weak partnerships with the Middle

East and Northern Africa but also problems concerning economic and social stability

within these countries bear potential to endanger the European Union by threads like

terrorism or especially refugee movements evolving out of these countries.