A California company is building plants and producing huge amounts of solar power for South Africa. Why not here?

In collaboration with a Saudi financing company (and Google!), SolarReserve will produce almost 350mW of electricity from four solar plants in South Africa’s sunny Karoo (from Kimberly west into the northern Cape).

In fact SolarReserve does have a single operation in Nevada, but the new operation just announced in South Africa will be its fourth just in that country.

Both our countries use fossil fuels at about the same percentages: 70% of American electricity is fossil fuel generated, 67% for South Africa.

Traditional fossil fuel plants produce more electricity once operating than comparable solar operations. American nuclear power plants, for example, proudly insist that they generate around 500 mW and a typical coal-fired electric plant generates around 550mW. This is up to three times what a typical solar plant creates.

More importantly, coal-fired and nuclear plants sustain their rated output far better than alternative energy plants like solar, which of course don’t produce at night.

Is South Africa simply “greener” than America?

No, unfortunately. The flip side of output is the cost of building a plant. Solar plants are much less expensive than traditional fossil fuel plants and can be up and running in 16 months, half as long as a coal-fired plant. Nuke facilities can take a decade to build.

That’s the key for South Africa, and it’s the reason such a fertile market exists there right now for solar energy providers. Last year the country experienced its first rolling outages and more are expected this year.

Africa’s rapid growth demands alternative energy sources in a way America does not. It costs less to build and can be operating in a fraction of the time. Politicians, I’m afraid, and not environmentalists are driving the process in South Africa.

Inevitably, though, Americans will benefit. As expected when South Africa’s first solar plants came on line they produced far less than projected. Any new technology is going to experience such growing pains.

Working through these engineering issues gave rise – at least in SolarReserve’s case – to a whole new alternative to PV (photovoltaic) solar electricity production.

PV is what we all understand: a cell hit by the sun produces electricity. It’s what’s on the top of your home and it’s what we use to create a bit of power in our camps in the African bush.

SolarReserve is now a leader of a new almost scifi technology referred to as CSP (concentrated solar thermal power): Ten thousand tracking mirrors, rather than cells, circled onto a 1,500 acre field direct laser-like sun onto the top of a 550′ tower at the center, melting salt at temperatures as high as 1,000F.

The salt is then used to heat steam to power generators. The reason the Saudi company has joined these ventures is because an easy by-product of this process is fresh from salt water.

By the way, the Australians just announced a breakthrough in the old PV technology. Traditional PV cells are rated as low as 18% efficiency. The new Australian methodology increases efficiency to 33-40%.

The answer to the question I poised at the top is urgency and capital. There is more of the first and less of the latter in South Africa than the U.S.

Those of us who look long-term, though, see the present urgency and poverty in South Africa vis-a-vis the U.S. as an opportunity to help us all.

Does this mean “green” is “poorer” and more “reactive” than non-green?

For the time being. That’s the point: only for the time being. As crass it is, we non-greeners are using green South Africa to work through the glitches before we handily adopt the new technology.

It’s the way of the (capitalist) world.

Xenophobia triggered by the slaughter at Charlie Hebdo has devolved in Africa from Christian/Muslim into primitive and very dangerous tribal racism.

The demonstrations, lawlessness and violence we saw last week in places like Algiers and Niger was a direct response by Muslims to French secular dogma featuring Charlie Hebdo’s mocking Muslim cartoons.

That grew in Europe to vigilantes against any foreigners. Particularly in Dresden and Birmingham xenophobia was ignited.

Back in Africa ethnic tensions are rising dramatically throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Today’s presidential election in Zambia, for instance, has been inflamed by ethnic tensions that had long since been curtailed.

And yesterday in Soweto, youth gangs looted foreign-owned stores, killing two and injuring more, mostly Somali and Pakistanis.

I suspect this is happening all around the world. We know it’s happening here in America.

In Algiers, Niger, Soweto, Birmingham, Dresden or Texas, xenophobia today in particular is the manifestation of people feeling they’re getting shafted, unfairly denied what their televisions are telling them is a “recovery.”

Economic statistics are improving and truly fewer people are on the skids. It’s as true in Soweto as it is Dallas.

But the “improvement” is horribly lopsided towards those who were better off to begin with. It’s also likely lopsided to those who have a greater experience with adversary, like immigrants.

In Soweto the shops that were looted were owned mostly by Somali and those killed were Somali. Few people in the world have had to endure the life of a Somali. Even fewer still have found the wherewithal to migrate an entire continent to try to etch out a more productive life for themselves.

Those are the kinds of people who will likely bounce back first, since they’ve already achieved the skills of survival in adverse situations.

And those below them who linger, like the supposed out-of-work truck driver in Texas, thrash out at a Muslim in a suit-and-tie because it’s a difference that’s clear enough for him to understand, a sort of Limbaugh economics.

There will always be xenophobia and ethnic racism, because there will always be differences that seem unfair to those who have less.

But today that unfairness is particularly sharp. The rich are unfairly rich, whether that be in South Africa or the United States. But unlike in the past, the rich are also in seeming total control.

Whether it is the Koch and Murdoch in the U.S. or the Zuma-ists in South Africa, the rich and powerful control much of the media with skills which include deceiving the poor and less informed that the problem is with “foreigners.”

The beauty of America is foreigners, the “melting pot” of the free world. Clearly this is where most of our creativity and ingenuity has come from. To a great extent, it’s a dynamic happening in South Africa, too.

Charlie Hebdo had no idea. Humor is sometimes so provocative it actually accomplishes something.