Massive wind and solar energy installations in the Sahara and nearby Sahel deserts would increase local temperatures, rainfall and vegetation - all benefits for the region, according to a climate-modeling study published Thursday in the journal Science [SUBSCRIPTION WAIVED].

We primarily focused on the effect of such large wind and solar farms in the Sahara region (including the most arid parts of the Arabian Desert) and the neighboring Sahel region for several reasons: (i) The Sahara is the largest desert in the world and has a great supply of solar and wind energy. (ii) The Sahara is sparsely inhabited, and thus the development of wind and solar farms would have minimal competition for land surface area against natural and other human land uses, such as agriculture (15). (iii) The Sahel is a transition region between desert and wooded savanna and, as such, is highly sensitive to land changes (18, 19, 23). (iv) Both regions are near Europe and the Middle East, areas with enormous current energy demand, and sub-Saharan Africa, which has a large projected growth in energy demand (see supplementary text). (v) Massive investment in solar and wind generation could promote economic development in the Sahel, one of the poorest regions in the world, as well as provide clean energy for desalination and provision of water for cities and food production (24). The wind and solar farms simulated in this study would generate approximately 3 and 79 TW of electrical power, respectively, averaged over a typical year (see supplementary text).

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