Turning Iraq into a country of energy exporter through the exploitation of solar energy and vast desert land

Abstract

The Iraqi government and people are not fully aware of the importance of renewable energy, so developing renewable energy technology in the region is primarily and a result of individual’s initiatives and non-governmental organizations instead of official policy. The fossil fuel is not limitless though in the next hundred years will be vanished, the only continuous resource is the solar energy as a solution to hinder the CO2 emission from various sources of fossil and biofuel. The solar energy requires an immediate attention due to the climatic change that affects the global warming. Iraq is a region rich in solar energy, where the sun’s brightness increases more than 3300 hours a year. The solar radiation falling in the desert areas of Iraq, which now accounts for more than 60% of the country’s area. 437072 km2 is equal to hundreds of thousands of times the total energy generated in this country. This is given Iraq a hand to stay as an energy supplier in the future as well as the present supplier of energy in the form of fossil fuel. Iraq consists of 18 provinces, three of which are in the northern province of the Kurdistan region and each province has the powers of semi-independent and special budget allocated by the central government where the provincial councils can invest part of this budget in the establishment of solar power stations, especially the provinces that suffer from lack of energy through the exploitation of other areas (deserts) to create such stations. the middle and south of Iraq have an averaged from16 to 10 MJ/m2/day for 5 months in the north, 6 months in the middle and southern region, respectively. But in western desert of Al-Anbar district almost have 8 month of sun shine duration while the lowest is over 4 MJ/m2/day. This energy is quite sufficient to drive all thermal photovoltaics (PV), Integrated Solar Combined Cycle (ISCC) plant and all houses hold facilities of heating, cooling and water distillation along the year.