INNOVATION IN... YOUR PLUG SOCKE:FOR SENSIBLE, risk-averse Germans, the easiest way to shoot down anyone with a dream or a vision is to quote former chancellor Helmut Schmidt: "If you're having visions, go find a doctor."

If that advice was to be taken seriously, the brains behind the Desertec consortium would need urgent medical attention. The German-led consortium has a project as visionary as it is expensive: a €400 billion solar energy plant in the Sahara Desert that, if transmitted to Europe, could meet 15 per cent of the continent’s energy needs by 2050.

“There’s a vast amount of sunshine there and there are vast amounts of space,” says Paul van Son, chief executive of Desertec. His sales pitch: within six hours, the world’s deserts receive more energy from the sun than mankind consumes in a year. Then comes the expensive bit: harnessing that energy.

Desertec’s solution isn’t regular solar panels but solar thermal power plants: fields of mirrors in the desert that direct light at a collection station which boils a fluid to power turbines and generate carbon-free electricity.

This power would be carried to Europe over a new, high-voltage direct current grid capable of transmitting electricity with just 3 per cent loss of power per 1,000km.

With 90 per cent of the world’s population living within 3,000km of a desert, Desertec says the losses are manageable.

Behind Desertec are 17 member companies, mostly German firms including Deutsche Bank and energy giants RWE and Eon, who view the project as increasing Europe’s energy security while cutting its CO2 emissions. Desertec’s priority this year is to start work on pilot projects, starting in Morocco.

“What we want is to create hard facts as quickly as possible,” says van Son. “That’s why we want to do a few demonstration projects as soon as we can.”

The project has received huge attention in Germany, and not just from admirers. Critics suggest that transporting energy across several countries, including some less-than-stable African nations, creates a whole new energy stability problem. Human rights groups, meanwhile, have described the project as a 21st-century form of colonialism.

Desertec dismisses those arguments but is quick to acknowledge that it needs radical legislation changes to reflect its avant garde business approach of importing renewable energy.

Thanks to its members, the Desertec consortium is well-connected in Berlin and is confident its legislative requests will be heard in the corridors of power. It’s clear that lawmakers see a chance for Germany to solidify its reputation as a world leader in renewable energy.

Already companies like Siemens have established themselves as industry leaders in the manufacture and installation of wind energy turbines. The solar energy sector is booming too, thanks to state subsidies for industry investors as well as attractive tax breaks and guarantees for homeowners. Anyone who mounts a solar energy panel in Germany can benefit from “feed-in tariffs” that oblige energy companies to buy excess energy produced by private panels at a guaranteed price.

Thus every German homeowner with a solar panel receives 43 cent for every surplus kilowatt/hour generated – up to seven times the regular market rate, guaranteed for 20 years. The guarantee and the promise that your solar panel pays for itself eventually, is part of a decade-old renewable energy act that encouraged investors large and small to get into the solar energy business.

Over 40 countries around the world have renewable energy legislation with similar “feed-in” provisions, but they have some catching up to do. Germany’s renewable energy industry now provides 14 per cent of the country’s energy and employs over 300,000 people.

Leading the charge is Germany’s solar energy sector. It had a turnover of €11 billion in 2008, generated by 15,000 companies employing 78,000 people – two-thirds of whom are in eastern German unemployment black spots.

Some 200 German companies are involved in producing solar panels that are sprouting up in solar farms around the country. The world’s second-largest solar farm – the size of 210 football fields – is currently being built in Brandenburg, beside Berlin.

But Chancellor Merkel has cast a shadow over the booming renewable energy industry with proposals to cut industry subsidies to be discussed at cabinet this month. The plan would cut feed-in fees by 15 to 16 per cent for new solar panels and eliminate subsidies entirely for new solar farms in fields that could also be used to grow crops.

Big players accuse Berlin of trampling on an industry still in its infancy while others admit the existing subsidies were extremely generous amid falling solar panel prices.

If Berlin follows through with its planned subsidy cuts, it will free up a few billion. It might even be persuaded to subsidise the great Desertec experiment. In Germany, if you have a renewable energy vision, forget the doctor and seek out a politician instead.