Solar Powered Desalination Farm to Bring Life to the Sahara

The ingenious plan, known as the Sahara Forest Project is simple: combine huge greenhouses with concentrated solar power (CSP) and plain old seawater. The solar power provides electricity for the farm of greenhouses, the desalination of the seawater provides both the freshwater and cooling required to grow a wide variety of crops.

One of the benefits of using the Seawater Greenhouse, invented by Chris Paton, is that it doesn’t draw water from the ever diminishing freshwater table and since we have an abundance of seawater across the globe it could potentially turn the most arid, inhospitable and usually poor regions of the planet into rich farming areas.
The Seawater Greenhouses already produce lettuces, peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes. The nutrients to grow the crops could come from local seaweed or even be extracted from the seawater itself.

There is already interest in funding demonstration projects from across the Middle East, including UAE, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait. The cost is not as astronomical as one would think, and is estimated at approximately $118 million for a 20 hectare site of greenhouses and a 10MW concentrated solar power farm.

Red Herring