A coalition of German firms has answered a call to study making an investment of 400 billion € in solar energy across North Africa. The plan, initiated by the Club of Rome, which has been promoting sustainable development and sustainable economic growth practices, since 1972. Reuters reports from Frankfurt:

Munich Re has invited several companies, including Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE), Siemens (SIEGn.DE), E.ON (EONGn.DE) and RWE (RWEG.DE), to meet on July 13 to agree on a joint project, said a foundation organised by members of the Club of Rome.

"We have approached Munich Re to get industrial companies on board and Munich Re organised the meeting with the other companies," said a spokesman for the Desertec foundation, which is fostering the idea to generate solar power in Africa.

The initiative would be the largest single renewable energy project ever undertaken, and would include multinational industrial production capacity. Undersea cables would carry electricity from North Africa across the Mediterranean to the European Union, supplying up to or possibly more than 20% of all EU power needs by 2050. In the short-term, heavy financial backing for such an initiative could relieve some market pressures on EU states' need for combustible fuels from Russia and other eastern trading partners. The first major solar farm is expected to be a 2-gigawatt production-capacity installation in the Tunisian desert, transmitting electricity to Italy, possibly within 5 years. A solar power station in western Europe with 100 gigawatts of production capacity would be able to power an estimated 28 million homes, and the solar intensity is far less in western Europe than in the Sahara.