What about Wave Power? It's pretty safe and has a very minimal environmental impact, almost constant output and for the most part is hidden from eye.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_power

Just listened to an interesting podcast about it on Late Night Live:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/latenightlive/stories/2011/3176948....

Obviously this wouldn't work for landlocked countries or countries which don't have shores with a constant supply of waves (I'm looking at you Baltic Sea) but for many parts of Africa, the Americas, Australia, Japan, etc, it might just be what we need.