TUNIS, TUNISIA — Tunisia has announced plans to export sunshine as renewable energy, because apparently there’s too much of it.
“We’ve got plenty of sunshine. It’s free, it burns our land, and we don’t have water. So why not sell it?” said Fatma Thabet Chiboub, Minister of Industry, Mines, and Energy, while fanning herself at a stakeholder meeting.
The bold initiative is part of the country’s plan to generate 85% of its electricity from pure sunlight by 2026 and export whatever is left over to nations stuck with boring old clouds.
Plans are already underway to trap sunlight in massive “Sun jars” and export them to countries kept in the dark. “Nothing screams renewable like sunlight in jars,” said Fethi Hanchi, Director General of the National Agency for Energy Management. “It just keeps shining.”
Renewable energy experts are cautiously optimistic, with some calling Tunisia the “Saudi Arabia of Vitamin D.” Dr. Sami Ben Nasr, a top renewable energy analyst, explained, “One beam of Tunisian sunlight could power an entire Belgian city. Possibly two if they skip breakfast.” He added, “We just need to make it harder to get, and boom, we’re global leaders.”
Early buyers include Germany, Norway, and Elon Musk, who called it “an elegant solution to a sunlight shortage on Mars.”
“We’ve been bottling sunlight wrong this whole time,” Musk tweeted. “Tunisia cracked it. This could replace SpaceX’s need for solar panels by 2030, or at least help Martian colonists get a tan.”
In unrelated news, Tunisia has also begun exporting desert sand, now rumored to cure aging, heartbreak, and bad data plans.