In what could be the most ambitious renewable-energy projects to be launched, twelve of Europe’s largest blue chip firms have signed an agreement to build a $555 billion solar thermal project in the Sahara desert.

In a bid to pump clean power, the project named “Desertec” has outlined plans that will scatter for hundreds of thermal plants across the North African desert and massive underwater high-voltage cables to meet up to 15% of Europe’s energy needs by 2050.

In the agreement, the companies say the Desertec project represents “a scientifically substantiated and economically feasible way ” of achieving secure and sustainable energy supplies.

As plans for the project passed in Munich on Monday, a few German commentators drew the comparison of harnessing solar power from the Sahara Desert to the U.S. space project in the 1960s which strived to put a man on the moon.