‘Sahara Forest’ Project:Using Solar to Make the Desert Bloom

A group of architects from the UK has proposed building powerful solar arrays to evaporate and desalinate seawater and then use it to cool and irrigate huge greenhouses in the Sahara and other desert regions. Known as the Sahara Forest Project, the futuristic plan would employ concentrated solar energy — which uses mirrors to focus the sun’s rays and generate heat and electricity — to power seawater greenhouses. The greenhouses’ cooling and irrigation systems would lower the temperature inside the structures by 15° C (27° F), enabling crops to grow and eliminating the need to tap into dwindling supplies of freshwater. The project’s designers, including Michael Pawlyn of Exploration Architecture, said investors in Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates have expressed interest in funding demonstration programs using the seawater greenhouses.