Well, that's one way to put the desert to good use

I live in a semi-desert area, although sometimes it's hard to tell because we have water sprinklers running everywhere. But it is a semi-desert area, and as such it gets a lot of sun. This has proved useful to people who like to make movies, but desert areas can be put to other uses. For example, the deserts in Africa can be used to power Europe:

[Desertec] aims to harvest the sun’s energy — using a method known as concentrating solar power, or C.S.P. — from the vast North African desert and deliver it as electricity, via high-voltage transmission lines, to markets in Europe. Eventually, its backers say, it could satisfy as much as 15 percent of the European Union’s power needs.

One of the persons quoted in the New York Times article put it this way:

Europeans need energy and have cash. Africans have sun and territory. It is quite logical to combine all this.

Of course, one person noted that Europe would therefore be dependent upon a power source that it doesn't control. Sound familiar?

If this project is built, Europe will shortly become dependent on it, and the Islamic world will have a second, and much tighter, noose to add to the oil one.

More here.