INFINITE AND EVERYWHERE
The journey to net zero means leaving behind the fossil fuel era, and moving towards a world which will power itself by extracting energy from super-abundant resources. This has profoundly important consequences for those attempting to prosecute an argument for Scottish independence based on resource nationalism. When Alex Salmond famously predicted that Scotland would become "the Saudi Arabia of renewables", he was not just wrong about Scotland. He was wrong about the world.
The energy potential of the Sahara Desert is so enormous, covering less than 5% of its surface with solar panels would generate enough electricity to power the entire planet.
But Egypt is never going to become the Saudi Arabia of solar. It will not get fabulously wealthy from this huge renewables bounty.
Constructing the massive transmission infrastructure required to transport electricity from North Africa to the rest of the world would be so expensive, powering the planet from the Sahara could never be cost competitive with alternative, and local, renewable solutions.
