A Solution To Renewable Energy Question

It seems that most people are keen on renewable energy but the problem is nobody wants one of those big, ugly wind turbines in their back yard or solar panels fastened to their roofs. I can understand that and would probably kick up a fuss if i woke up to find one churning away just outside my kitchen window. At the moment the turbines are situated out of town in fields which doesn't go down too well with the country folk.
I have a solution which seems a bit too easy and there must be drawbacks i haven't considered because someone else must have thought of it before and decided against it for some reason.
Deserts cover almost a quarter of the earths land surface. Thousands and thousands of miles of nothing but sand and more sand just sitting there getting blown about.
This space isn't being used for anything and by nature a desert receives plenty of sunshine so why are we not building large scale solar panel farms there?
I'm sure that if we make a deal with the North African countries that the Sahara straddles, we could easily set up enough wind turbines and solar panels to satisfy Europe's power needs.
The Middle East is virtually all desert, more than enough redundant space there just begging to be filled by the means to create renewable energy.
Every continent has access to a vast desert so why are we bothering trying to shoehorn wind and solar farms into congested areas when we have a quarter of the planet, bathed in more sunshine than you could shake a stick at, just left empty?
The host countries get a cut, we get renewable energy that doesn't destroy the environment and the the only people who won't be happy will be the Nuclear bods, the OPEC countries and the bosses of the likes of Exxon and BP and they have been destroying the planet for decades.
All that available space that we are not doing anything with and it isn't as if we have it earmarked for anything else.