Pierre le Hir and Marie de Vergès, “Quand l’Europe se chauffera au soleil du Sahara,” Le Monde, July 13, 2009.
Diana K. Davis, The Arid Lands: History, Power, Knowledge, Cambridge (Mass.), MIT Press, 2016.
Augustin Mouchot, La chaleur solaire et ses applications industrielles, Paris, Gauthier-Villars, 1869, p. 215.
François Jarrige, “‘Mettre le soleil en bouteille’: les appareils de Mouchot et l’imaginaire solaire au début de la Troisième République”, Romantisme, n° 150, avril 2010, p. 85-96.
Charles Tellier, La conquête pacifique de l’Afrique occidentale par le soleil, Paris, J. Michelet, 1890.
Ibid., p. 103.
John Perlin, Let It Shine: The 6,000-Year Story of Solar Energy, Novato, New World Library, 2013, p. 128-142.
Wolfgang Voigt, Atlantropa. Weltbauen am Mittelmeer. Ein Architektentraum der Moderne, Hamburg, Dölling und Galitz, 1998.
Paul Bouet, “Le mur Trombe,” in François Jarrige and Alexis Vrignon (eds.), Face à la puissance. Une histoire des énergies alternatives à l’âge industriel, Paris, La Découverte, 2020, p. 249-263.
Paul Bouet, "A Silent Graph: Tracing the Algerian Past of French Solar Experiments," Architecture Beyond Europe Journal, n° 18, 2021.
Abdou Moumouni, “L’énergie solaire dans les pays africains,” Présence africaine, n° 2, 1964, p. 96-126, quote p. 115.
Ibid.
Ernst Fritz Schumacher, Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered, London, Blond & Briggs, 1973; Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality, New York, Harper and Row, 1973.
Thomas Schmitt, “(Why) did Desertec Fail? An Interim Analysis of a Large-Scale Renewable Energy Infrastructure Project from a Social Studies of Technology Perspective”, Local Environment, vol. 23, n° 7, May 2018. Like its predecessors, Desertec seems to end up being a failure. The many critics it attracted and the major technical and political obstacles it faced prevented its realization, except for punctual realizations, like the Ouarzazate solar power plant, which was decided by Morocco. But the idea of covering the Sahara with solar panels continue to be promoted. See for instance Filip Filipov, “Solar Panels in the Sahara Desert about Environmentally Friendly Energy for the World,” Conference on the Future of Europe, accessed August 25, 2022, ➝.
Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate, New York, Simon & Schuster, 2014, p. 226. Klein adds: “These ideas predate industrial-scale extraction of fossil fuels. And yet the ability to harness the power of coal to power factories and ships is what, more than any single other factor, enabled these dangerous ideas to conquer the world. It’s a history worth exploring in more depth, because it goes a long way toward explaining how the climate crisis challenges not only capitalism but the underlying civilizational narratives about endless growth and progress within which we are all, in one way or another, still trapped.”