A little beside the topic perhaps, but my all time favorite desert greening project is connecting the huge Qattara Depression in Egypt with the ocean.
This would create a huge lake in northwestern Egypt, potentially home for millions. It would also negate one year of climate change induced sea rise, or so I read somewhere.
> it is apparent that the hydro plant alone would be cost effective at an oil price of 34 $/barrel.
The novel hydro-solar scheme is also really interesting but appears not to have gone anywhere; I suspect the economics of the whole thing are now dwarfed by solar, although "use the depression as a pumped storage scheme" plan has some mileage there.
> Couple dozen 55km Boring Company Tunnels could do the trick, no?
The Boring Company is not the only one using COTS tunneling equipment, nor has any relevant engineering project under it's portfolio. Although it excels at marketing, I fail to see how it should be used as a measuring stick in geothecnical work.
It sounds like a neat idea from the point of view of the sort of person who thinks it might be cool to use nukes to excavate mountain passes, or do large scale geo-engineering of the oceans to stop global warming, but...if you don't like habitat destruction and climate change I don't think you're going to get behind this plan.
We've devastated absurd quantities of woodland, marshland, plains, rainforest, river, beach and ocean ecosystems. Devastating a few microscopic specks of desert ecosystem seems like the least of our worries.
This would create a huge lake in northwestern Egypt, potentially home for millions. It would also negate one year of climate change induced sea rise, or so I read somewhere.
https://www.energycentral.com/c/ec/qattara-depression-projec...
Map of the potential lake, if brought up to sea level: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qattara_Depression#/media/File...