Oil and gas deposits in Algeria are finite. The scorching sun is not. Even though the North African nation gets 95% of its export earnings from oil, it decided to exploit the one alternative energy resource they knew they would have indefinitely, a resource that could power the world four times over. So Algeria constructed an enormous solar facility a year ago with parabolic solar energy troughs nearly 45 football fields wide in the Sahara Desert. Not only will Algerian homes and businesses be alternative powered, but European ones as well, with the final objective to export 6,000 megawatts to Europe by 2020. That is the equivalent of 4 million homes. As the technology behind solar energy cells gets better, the facility becomes more and more productive.
Elsewhere on the continent, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, the lack of electricity is a deterrent to investors. With demand growing 8% a year, the Rift Valley, which stretches from the northern end of the Red Sea down to Mozambique in east Africa, may hold the solution hidden in the ground: geothermal Alternative Energy. An energy source that is impervious to any kind of weather and minimal carbon emissions. Perhaps most crucially, though, east Africa sorely lacks West Africa’s oil or the Sahel’s capacity for solar energy. So geothermal Alternative Energy is a very inexpensive source of energy. Hydroelectric dams currently power much of the area, but are subject to drought. The United Nations Environment Program estimates its potential yield as 14,000 megavolts, while only 200 megavolts are being currently harvested. With the right infrastructure and capital, it could provide 10-25% of the region’s energy by 2030.
