Clean Energy and Political Stability: Challenges for International Cooperation within the Union for the Mediterranean

The challenges represented by “global warming” and “energy demmand” have contributted to insert the enviromental debate among the main topics of international cooperation agreements. The Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) – an institution which comprehends forty-three countries in Europe, North Africa and Middle East – has developed ecological projects which were also designed as a strategy for strengthening the political and economical ties between its members. Within the six concrete targets defined at the Conference of Marseille (2008) aimed to enhance the visibility of the UfM, two were clearly based on ecological criteria: the de-pollution of the Mediterranean Sea and the installation of solar power plants in desert regions. Precisely the discussion on the political conditions for the implementation of the Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) in the Sahara Desert is intended to support our reflection about the potentialities and contradictions of such initiative. Once these solar plant projects are destinated to provide not only Middle East and North Africa (MENA) with “clean energy”, but also approximately 16% of the European energy demmand by 2050, it seems urging to consider the geopolitical transformations that the “desertec project” could unleash. We are inclined to think that such enterprise would indeed change the geopolitical meaning of the Sahara Desert and thus contribute to balance the political relationship between European and MENA countries. Although it is not likely that the marginalised countries of the UfM are going to become “equal partners” of its European counterparts, it is probable that the export of solar energy can diminish the political assymetries between North and South. It is also crucial to reflect whether the “political instability” of the MENA countries can impose barriers to the accomplishment of the idea, especially because “Desertec” was conceived before the so-called “Arab Spring”.