Articles Posted in the Renewable energy category

Solar traffic lights a hit in Cape Town

February 29, 2008
Posted in Renewable energy

South Africa’s first set of solar-powered traffic lights in the Cape Town suburb of Ottery have received positive feedback from everyone from the municipality to motorists, Delivery magazine reports.

The lights have been such a success that people have been asking for them to be installed elsewhere, said the National Energy Efficiency Agency’s Barry Bredenkamp. The Central Energy Fund announced earlier this year that it did indeed have plans to install solar traffic lights in major cities around the country to prevent the traffic chaos caused by Eskom’s “load shedding”. More than 2,000 critical intersections have been identified in Johannesburg alone. One set of solar traffic lights has already been installed in the commercial suburb of Braamfontein. Durban, Port Elizabeth and Nelspruit have also been earmarked for intervention. The National Energy Efficiency Agency will manage the project, the local government magazine reports.

The Ottery lights cost of about R150,000 to install, Bredenkamp said. But if solar traffic lights were to be installed in larger quantities the price of a set of eight lights could come down to R110,000, he said. A conventional set of eight pole traffic lights consumes as much electricity as “a family of four occupying a three-bedroom house”, he said.

Theft of the solar panels and batteries has been a source of concern, but Bredenkamp says that the panels are located high up on street poles and the batteries are in a concrete casing at the bottom of the poles to prevent vandalism, so theft hasn’t been an issue. The lights also have a control mechanism that alerts the service provider if they are being tampered with.

Woolworths rolls out recyclable signage

February 27, 2008
Posted in Business, Lifestyle

Retail chain Woolworths has announced that 30 percent of its in-store signage is now made from renewable raw materials and contains recycled fibres from post industrial and post consumer waste. The company says it began using recyclable board for store signage and displays in 2006 as an ecological alternative to the standard plastic commonly used in signage.

It says it is also investigating printing with water-based or vegetable-based inks in the near future. “We are constantly working with suppliers in the printing industry to find innovative advancements that reduce our ecological footprint,” says decor production manager Chantall Klaasen. The recyclable board is manufactured by Xanita, an eco-friendly board manufacturer.

African Development Bank to fund Congo forest conservation

February 27, 2008
Posted in Conservation

The African Development Bank Group has announced that it plans to invest $814-million in biodiversity conservation and natural resources management in the Congo Basin.

The Congo Basin contains the second largest remaining humid tropical forest in the world, but it is threatened by commercial logging, mining and large-scale commercial hunting for bush meat and ivory.

Via:: Environment News Service

Greens unmoved by Branson’s biofuel flight

February 27, 2008
Posted in Transport

Virgin Atlantic’s first commercial biofuel flight this week failed to impress Britain’s environmentalists. Some even dismissed it as a “nonsensical” publicity stunt. The Boeing 747 flew from London to Amsterdam using a 20 percent biofuel mix of coconut and babassu oil in one of its four fuel tanks

Climate change campaigners don’t rate biofuels highly as an option to combat climate change. One group suggested that curbing the growth in the number of flights would be a more effective measure. Aviation is one of the fastest growing contributors to carbon emissions and experts forecast that airlines will account for 5 percent of global warming gases in 2050,” the Independent reports.

Richard Branson, the head of Virgin Atlantic, said that the oils used to make the biofuel for this week’s flight were from existing rainforest and derelict plantations, and not from food crops or from a source that caused deforestation. He also said that this biofuel would not be the fuel used in future, which was more likely to be made from an algae, possible from sewage plants.

Airbus has also been testing alternative fuels, although not biofuels. On February 1 the aircraft manufacturer staged the first test flight by a commercial aircraft using a synthetic liquid fuel processed from natural gas. An A380 superjumbo flew from Bristol in the UK to Toulouse, as part of a programme to assess the environmental impact of alternative fuels, the Financial Times reports.

Although gas to liquid fuel reportedly offers only small benefits in terms of carbon dioxide emissions, it is suphur-free and offers significant gains in terms of local air quality, the report says.

Airbus is working with Shell and Rolls-Royce on the test programme.

Inflatable photovoltaics

February 24, 2008
Posted in Renewable energy

It may look like a giant kiddies balloon, but the object pictured above is in fact state-of-the-art concentrated solar photovoltaic technology for which Cool Earth Solar, a California-based company, has reportedly just received $21-million dollars in funding.

Concentrated solar systems use lenses or reflectors to concentrate sunlight onto solar cells, which reduces the amount of solar cell area needed to produce electricity. So the same amount of sunlight can be captured using significantly less of the photovoltaic material (eg, silicon), which is very expensive.
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German billionaire looks to invest in SA clean technologies

February 24, 2008
Posted in Renewable energy

German billionaire Hasso Plattner, co-founder of software giant SAP and owner of the Fancourt golf estate in George, announced a R350 million venture capital fund in Cape Town recently. Among the Hasso Plattner Africa fund’s preferred investment areas are clean technologies, such as renewable energy and energy-saving concepts. Germany’s MAN Ferrostaal, described as a global provider of industrial services and a key player in alternative energy, is also investing in the fund.

Via:: Business Report

Beer made from melting ice caps

February 24, 2008
Posted in Food

We all know Greenland’s ice cap is melting and, as it covers an area of about 1,6-million square kilometres and is about 3,000 metres thick, if it all melted, the world’s sea levels could rise by as much as six metres. But Greenland Brewhouse seems to be making the best of the situation, by making beer with the pristine icecap water – it’s guaranteed to be at least 2,000 years old and free of pollutants.

The company stresses that it only uses ice from icebergs, which have already broken off the main inland ice and are floating in the fjords, so they would have melted anyway. “We are very much aware of the global warming, and it is very important to us not to destroy or use the unique inland ice,” the brewery’s website says.

The beer is brewed by hand in a microbrewery in Narsaq, a town in southern Greenland. The small icebergs are said to be specially selected by local fishermen, who tow them to the brewery.

The brewery company was founded in December 2004 and produced its first beer in 2006. It makes two kinds of beer: brown ale, which was originally made by the Vikings, and pale ale, which originates in Britain. Unfortunately, it seems the beer is only available in Denmark.

More bad news about the oceans

February 23, 2008
Posted in Green News

The millions of people who rely on fishing to make a living could be in for a hard time thanks to climate change because scientists expect it to have a serious impact on the oceans’ already dwindling fish stocks.

A UN Environment Programme report released this week, entitled In Deep Water, maps the impact of pollution, overharvesting and alien infestation on the world’s fisheries and then adds climate change to the mix – and the findings make depressing reading.

The worst-affected 10 to 15 percent of the oceans are also home to the world’s most important fishing grounds, the report found. And up to 80 per cent of the world’s primary fish catch species are already exploited beyond or close to their harvesting capacity.
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Shades of green in this year’s budget

February 21, 2008
Posted in Business, Green News

The Budget is going green it would seem. Not only were this year’s budget documents printed on Triple Green paper – chlorine free, biodegradable and comprising 60 percent sugar cane fibre – but the National Treasury actually went to the trouble of calculating its carbon footprint (it’s work since the beginning of this year apparently produced 38,000kg of carbon emissions). Indeed, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel announced in his 2008 Budget yesterday that the treasury has pledged to measure and reduce its environmental footprint and it calls on other government departments to take up the same challenge.
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