MENA: A NEW RENEWABLE HEARTLAND

摘要

If you are looking for a powerful solar resource, then the relentless blue skies of the world's desert regions have immediate appeal. As the chairman of the Desertec Foundation's supervisory board said at its launch, the world's desert regions receive more energy from the sun in six hours than humans consume within a year. The band of countries that make up the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) are either desert or at best arid. There's no precise list of which countries make up the region, as it is a geographical region rather than a political alliance, but at its broadest it includes Algeria, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Yemen, the overall population totalling some 355 million.