The colossal African solar farm that could power Europe

We visit a vast power plant at the door to the Moroccan desert that is helping to define the energy future of the world.

The minibus crosses the vast plateau on a newly paved road. Cracked fields stretch away towards the Moroccan desert to the south.

Yet the barren landscape is no longer quite as desolate as it once was. This year it became home to one of the world's biggest solar power plants.

Hundreds of curved mirrors, each as big as a bus, are ranked in rows covering 1,400,000 sq m (15m sq ft) of desert, an area the size of 200 football fields.

The massive complex sits on a sun-blasted site at the foot of the High Atlas mountains, 10km (6 miles) from Ouarzazate - a city nicknamed the door to the desert. With around 330 days of sunshine a year, it's an ideal location.

As well as meeting domestic needs, Morocco hopes one day to export solar energy to Europe. This is a plant that could help define Africa's - and the world's - energy future.

Of course, on the day I visit the sky is covered in clouds. "No electricity will be produced today," says Rachid Bayed at the Moroccan Agency for Solar Energy (Masen), which is responsible for implementing the flagship project.

An occasional off day is not a concern, however. After many years of false starts, solar power is coming of age as countries in the sun finally embrace their most abundant source of clean energy.

The Moroccan site is one of several across Africa and similar plants are being built in the Middle East - in Jordan, Dubai and Saudi Arabia.

The falling cost of solar power has made it a viable alternative to oil even in the most oil-rich parts of the world.

Noor 1, the first phase of the Moroccan plant, has already surpassed expectations in terms of the amount of energy it has produced.

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