It would seem to make more sense for Africans to fulfill their energy needs and desire for energy independence with solar energy (and perhaps they are). But East Africa has another resource. It comes not from the sun but from the cradle of humankind.

Scientists and engineers long ago recognized that the Rift Valley holds tremendous potential for renewable energy of an earthier sort. The region, which spans Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, and Tanzania, lies atop geothermal energy resources that, if harnessed, could potentially generate some 2000 megawatts of power generation capacity in Kenya alone, according to Nairobi-based Kenya Electricity Generating Company, or KenGen, the entity responsible for producing more than 80 percent of Kenya’s electricity.

Most of that comes from hydropower projects, many of them, one might surmise, done in the old style, i.e., big and ecologically damaging. But KenGen also established a geothermal station, the 45-megawatt Olkaria I, back in the 1980s and completed a second, 64-megawatt project, Olkaria II, in 2004.

On Tuesday, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd., which built the units that went into the projects, said it will build a third 35-megawatt plant at Olkaria II, expanding the station’s capacity significantly. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries makes everything from ships, forklifts, engines, and nuclear power plants to refrigeration systems, fighter jets, and missiles, according to its web site. In the geothermal realm, it has decades of experience, having built plants in Iceland, Indonesia, Mexico, the Philippines, New Zealand, Japan, and even the United States (where else, but in California?) 

With the surge of investment and interest in renewable energy, one can only hope that technological advances and good intentions can be deployed not only to clean up and offset the mess made by the U.S. and other industrialized nations but also to power light bulbs, refrigeration, water and waste treatment plants, and all those other accoutrements of basic life in the cash-poor but resource- and culturally-rich old continent.