Editor's note: This week, Ecotality's Bill Hobbs points to an interesting new development: Algeria, a member of OPEC, has plans for exporting solar power. This post was originally published on June 20, 2007.

A member of OPEC jumps into the solar energy business? Gotta be from The Onion, right? Wrong. Algeria, which earns $1 billion every week exporting oil, is developing a plan to generate solar power for both export and domestic use, reports Reuters.

Algeria plans to make use of its hot southern desert to develop solar power for export and domestic consumption, the Opec member country said on Monday. The scheme is due to be completed by 2015 in Africa’s second-largest country, where most of the 33 million people live in the northern coastal strip. Temperatures in the desert south are high. “Algeria has a huge sunny area with big potential to be exploited. It has also financial and human resources. It lacks nothing. We can compete with other countries,” Energy and Mines Minister Chakib Khelil said.

Here’s some analysis from the Gulf Times of Qatar.

Opec member Algeria’s plan to generate solar power for export and domestic use is an excellent innovation that other Arab states would do well to emulate, a renewable energy advocacy group said yesterday. Wolfgang Palz of the Germany-based World Council for Renewable Energy said Arab states had been “left behind a bit” in the Western-led race for alternatives to fossil fuels but could catch up because they had the necessary educational base.

“For modern types of renewable energies like wind energy, the leadership is right now in Europe, California and Texas,” Palz, an engineer and physician by training, told Reuters. “Arab countries have been left behind a bit, and it’s very important now that political decisions are being taken to catch up with the rest of the world because Arab countries have resources - the intellectual resources - to do this.”

“We think that in the long run all renewable energies will be greatly needed because fossil and atomic energy will be progressively exhausted and disappear.” Palz praised Algeria’s plans to develop power for its domestic market as well as for exports from a hybrid solar-gas plant in the Sahara desert due to come on stream in 2009, with exports of power to Europe due to start up by 2015.

Algeria reportedly has enough oil to last it for 23 years and enough gas for 50 years at current production rates. But the country of 33 million people also has a fast growing population, high unemployment and booming demand for power.

Algeria’s move into solar energy is a very foreward thinking business move - it recognizes that Algeria’s economic future isn’t in the oil business but the energy business. Algeria isn’t the only oil-producing country that could make this kind of move. Much of the Middle Eastern oil nations are also blessed with an abundance of sunshine beating down on vast stretches of wide-open arid land and deserts. I don’t know, but I’m guessing there’s also incredible potential there for generating wind power, provided you could design wind turbines that would not be degraded by sandstorms.

As an American, I’m not entirely enthralled by the idea of the world becoming more dependent upon the Middle East for energy, but at least such diversification would benefit the environment and also lessen the dependence on the region’s abundant but ultimately finite underground energy resource.

Solar and wind power might also hold promise for parts of the Middle East and North Africa that have plenty of sun and wind but lack oil.