About that Siemens Retreat from Desertec

Hans-Josef Fell (speaker for energy policy of the Green faction of the German Parliament) just wrote about the third Desertec conference in his latest newsletter.

He noted some interesting background to the recent decision by Siemens to leave the Desertec project.

For one, Siemens actually was the world market leader in solar in 2000, and decided to get out of that business exactly a couple of years before the market exploded in Germany from 2004 on with the Law on Priority of Renewable Energy.

And they only came back to solar in 2009, which was too late in the game to get any traction.

Meanwhile Desertec still has 57 partners from 16 countries. Siemens will miss out on the opportunities from this project, but there are still enough companies left who are willing to get a piece of the action from decarbonising the world’s energy.