Udo Ungeheuer (lower row, L-R), CEO of Schott AG, Rene Umlauft, person in charge of renewable energies of Siemens Energy, Thorsten Jeworrek, member of the board of Muenchner Rueck, Gerhard Knies, chairman of the board of Desertec Foundation, and Herve Touati, member of the executive board of E.ON Climate and Renewables pose with a list signed by all founder members of Desertec Foundation in Munich, Germany, 13 July 2009. Behind them stand Frank-Detlef Drake (upper row, L-R), deputy head 'Research and Development' of RWE, Wolfgang Knothe, director of MAN Solar Millennium GmbH, Caio Koch-Wester, deputy CEO of Deutsche Bank group, Juergen H. Lange, deputy head 'Global Energy' of HSH Nordbank, and Juergen Wild, head of the executive board of M+W Zander. German firms on Monday launched a renewable energy project designed to provide European households with electricity from the Sahara. Utilities giants RWE and E.ON, electro-engineering group Siemens and Deutsche Bank are among the dozen companies involved in the 400-billion-euro (552-billion-dollar) Desertec Industrial Initiative. Using high voltage direct current transmission lines, the energy..could then be transferred to Europe where it could supply 15 per cent..of the continents electricity needs.