With the cost of oil skyrocketing, Saudi Arabia's large sun-drenched tract of land known as the 'sun belt' is attracting the attention of a growing number of European leaders. The plan is to buy this solar energy as they would oil.

A group called The Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation (TREC) are leading a political initiative to build enormous solar thermal power plants and long distance power lines to supply energy to Europe.

These plants would be connected via some supergrid. The proposed power plants would simultaneously provide energy to seawater desalination plants in the Middle East and North Africa enabling fresh clean drinking water for the local population.

And while this idea seems like it is a long way off, it already has such influential supporters as Prince El Hassan of Jordan, Nicolas Sarkozy, the President of France, and UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Sunny Outlook

Arnulf Jaeger-Walden, one of Europe's leading energy experts, said that less than 0.4% of the solar energy that falls on the deserts of North Africa and the Middle East would satisfy all of Europe's energy needs.

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This opportunity isn't lost on Saudi Arabia. Ali al-Nuaimi, it's Oil Minister said the country hopes to become as big an expert with solar energy as it is with oil.

'For a country like Saudi Arabia ... one of the most important sources of energy to look at and to develop is solar energy,' said al-Nuaimi. 'One of the research efforts that we are going to undertake is to see how we make Saudi Arabia a center for solar energy research, and hopefully over the next 30 to 50 years we will be a major megawatt exporter.'

The solar energy international market is still in its infancy and the Saudi's are looking to exploit their natural resources again.

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