[HarryHirsch]

They talk about the three main uses of sand being concrete, glass and electronics (the third one is actually wrong, only 15 % of silicon produced ends up in the semiconductor industry, the rest is used in metallurgy). I can imagine that one could use desert sand for the last two purposes but don't know how much of an impact that would make.

[throwaway2048]

In most glass production, and in all silicon production you need sand of high chemical purity, desert sand is heavily contaminated with things that are not silicon dioxide.