Pyramids Saved by the Power of the Sun
An old Arab saying is: “Man fears time, but time fears the Pyramids”. That was before man invented pollution, which is now slowly taking it’s toll on the pyramids. But there is salvation from modern man’s transgression and it may just come from the ancient Sun-god Re.
The nearby (literally 30 metres) town of Nazlet as-Samaan ravages the monuments daily with clouds of airborne pollution as tourists flock to see the Great Pyramids. Some days, it is said you can barely see the mighty structures through the smog. It’s not just near the Pyramids however, it is the same all over Egypt. In fact, the country is said to have among the highest greenhouse gas emissions in the world.
As such, the country is now trying to reverse that by diversifying and cleaning its electric power production. Due to the country’s location and almost constant sun, the obvious way to do this is via solar power.
Abd El Rahman Salah El Din, Chairman of Nat’s Renewable Energy Authority, Egypt, said, “We have many capabilities. We have a huge desert, we have human resources, we have clouds only about nine or ten days a year, and our sun projection is very high because we are in the sun belt.”
In Kureimat in the Egyptian desert, workers prepare to capture sun rays and turn them into energy. Constructing solar panel structures in an area of 65 thousand square meters of desert, it is the first part of the country’s planned solar energy scale-up, itself part of a regional plan extending across North Africa.
Meanwhile, construction has begun on the country’s first solar unit, with operation expected to commence in 2010. Minister of Electricity, Hassan Younes, has said the station, located just south of Cairo in Koraymat, will have a capacity of 140 megawatts.
It is part of a larger facility that also includes three non-solar units and is expected to generate 2,900 megawatts once it comes onstream. Egypt aims to generate 20 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2020. Officials say Egypt’s combined oil and gas reserves will last the country for roughly three more decades.
Source: Egypt to combat emissions with solar power
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Does increasing emissions mean that Egypt’s ancient wonders are in danger? This would be an absolute travesty.