Visa problems keep Africans out of climate talks
December 12, 2008
Posted in Green News
Delegates from some of the African countries likely to be worst hit by climate change have been unable to attend the United Nations talks in Poznan, Poland, because of problems obtaining visas, Afrique en Ligne reports.
There are only three Polish Embassies in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa – in South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria – which has made it very difficult for people wanting to attend the talks to obtain visas.
Saleemul Huq, head of climate change at the Institute for Environment and Development Studies in London, was quoted as saying that “the absence of media, NGO and government representatives from the countries most vulnerable to climate change has meant that their concerns have been slipping from the agenda”.
He added: “We have lost count of the number of people from such nations that have been unable to attend the full two-week conference because of the excessive time taken to process their visa applications. If this happens again at next year’s meeting in Copenhagen, it will be a serious impediment to getting a deal that is fair and equitable.”
Read the full article here
Hydrogen cars could be just 10 years away
December 12, 2008
Posted in Transport
Hydrogen-powered cars may be in mass production in the next decade, a New York Times article reported recently. Car makers and energy companies in the United States have begun to step up their efforts to develop hydrogen cars and the fuelling infrastructure needed to keep them on the road.
Honda is planning to have a hydrogen model in mass production by 2018, says the article. Ford, Daimler, BMW and Volkswagen are also working on prototypes.
“Hydrogen was forever 20 years away, but now, for the first time, you see some of the milestones moving closer, not away anymore,” Mike McGowan, the chairman of the US National Hydrogen Association, told the NYT. “There is now almost a sense of urgency about the infrastructure.”
There’s been something of a stalement, with car makers arguing that there’s no point rolling out hydrogen cars if there isn’t a network of fuelling stations for them and energy companies arguing that there was no point in spending vast sums on creating the fuelling infrastructure when there are hardly any cars on the road.
But now, thanks to the volatility of the oil price and the threat of climate change, there’s a new urgency to develop alternative energy technologies. Cars and fuelling stations are to be introduced in “clusters” in urban centres such as Los Angeles, Berlin and Tokyo.
For example, in Southern California, Shell has introduced a hydrogen pump at one of its service stations and more are apparently on the cards. At the same time, Honda is leasing about 200 of its FCX Clarity cars over the next three years to selected customers in the region, who will be able to fill their cars up at the Shell service stations.
The cars are reportedly being leased for about $600 a month – far less than they would cost to buy. But, encouragingly, there was a huge public interest in the leasing programme.
The United States’s National Research Council estimates that there may be two million hydrogen-powered vehicles on the road by 2020. This would represent only 1 percent of all vehicles on the road in the US, but the numbers are expected to rise dramatically after that.
Read the full article here
Japanese ecofriendly gift wrapping
December 11, 2008
Posted in Green tips, Lifestyle
Furoshiki gift wrapping from RecycleNow on Vimeo
Here’s a tree-friendly way to wrap your gifts this Christmas. With Japanese Furoshiki you can use a pretty scarf or any piece of beautiful material rather than paper – and it’s 100 percent reusalbe. Watch the video from RecycleNow (the UK’s official recycling campaign) for a few wrapping ideas, or download the pdf below for more instructions. You’ve still got plenty of time to practise.
Thanks to Jennifer for the idea.
Can we have more renewable energy now, please?
December 9, 2008
Posted in Renewable energy
Now that Eskom, the state electricity utility, has decided that it can’t afford to build a new nuclear power plant will it start to pay more attention to renewable energy alternatives?
Many South Africans breathed a sigh of relief at the news last week that the board of Eskom had decided not to proceed with the proposed Nuclear-1 project – the country’s second pressurised water reactor nuclear power plant.
But, alas, the decision was not taken because Eskom had decided to scrap nuclear and embrace solar and wind. The size of the investment in Nuclear-1 is more than Eskom can handle in these straitened times and the utility is finding it hard to raise the money needed to fund the project.
The two bidders for the contract, the EPR consortium led by Areva of France and the N-Powerment consortium led by Westinghouse of the USA, have been told the bad news and have taken it rather well, according to reports.
NUCLEAR-1 IS SA’S NUMBER 2
The planned new nuclear plant was announced last year when South Africa was experiencing crippling power cuts. Work on the project was expected to start in 2010. The plant’s first power was expected in 2017/18. Reports say the plant was anticipated to generate about 3,500MW of electricity.
South Africa has only one nuclear power plant at present. Koeberg, situated on the Western Cape coast near Cape Town, which supplies 1,800MW, or 6 percent of the country’s electricity. But the country has big nuclear ambitions. Eskom wants to increase the amount of nuclear power supplied to the grid to 20,000MW, which is about a quarter of the 80,000MW it hopes to be generating by 2025 – up from 40,000W now.
HOW MUCH WAS THE PROJECT GOING TO COST?
Estimates put the cost of Nuclear-1 at more than R100-billion ($10-billion) – which would apparently make it the largest single investment in Eskom’s history. But Eskom spokesman Fani Zulu declined to disclose the worth of the project to AFP, saying Eskom had signed a confidentiality agreement with the two foreign companies bidding for the contract.
Business Day wrote that the project could have cost as much as R200-billion, or an amount that could have “bought Eskom two new coal-fired power stations, and left it with some change to spare”.
Anyway, it has been put on the back burner until further notice. Political opposition parties have reportedly hailed the news, saying it has spared South Africa the burden of a huge foreign debt.
IS THAT IT FOR SA NUKES THEN?
No, It seems not. Portial Molefe, the director general of the department of public enterprises, has been quoted as saying that the government is still committed to introducing nuclear because the country has to deal with its carbon footprint and diversify its energy mix – about 90 percent of our energy comes from coal.
In a press statement the department said: “Government is committed to exploring the use of nuclear energy as part of base-load energy generation and to build an associated industrial capability to support such generation thereby reducing the cost of nuclear energy over time.”
It added that the government would establish a task team, lead by the department of minerals and energy, “that will work with Eskom, to develop and implement a framework for procuring a nuclear technology partner to support both the build and associated industrialisation process”.
There is speculation that the government may be hoping that the price of nuclear will come down as recession reduces global demand for nuclear power.
WHAT ABOUT PEBBLE BED REACTORS?
The Coalition Against Nuclear Energy issued a statement in which it said that there is little reason for over optimism about Eskom’s decision not to invest in foreign companies for the Nuclear-1 project plant while the government remains committed to its nuclear power programme.
Cane said there was “a deliberate silence” about the experimental pebble-bed modular reactor (PBMR), which it said had already cost taxpayers more than R16-billion.
According to Business Report, Molefe of the department of public enterprise had said that the PBMR programme was not being abandoned, but it would be delayed.
AND OTHER ENERGY OPTIONS?
There are many in South Africa who believe that nuclear is the only alternative to coal for “clean” baseload power. But in recent times the support for renewable energy has increased noticeably. A group of MPs even formed a lobby group in October to get things moving in the renewable energy sector.
Greenpeace opened its first office in South Africa last month to focus on getting the country to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions – it is the 14th-highest carbon emitter in the world – by ending its dependence on coal, without resorting to nuclear power. “The country is in a position to harness abundant renewable energy sources – solar, wind and biomass – and take a lead in an African energy revolution,” says Greenpeace.
The cost of renewable energy is usually given as the reason why it is impractical. But this is beginning to change. Brad Smith, campaign director for Greenpeace Africa, was reported as saying: “As the costs of nuclear power continue to soar, the price of renewable energy is decreasing annually.
“Already, and without subsidies, wind power is cheaper than nuclear power per unit of energy produced, while concentrated solar technologies are making big progress in the same direction,” he said.
Research from the University of Cape Town, released at a WWF National Renewable Energy Conference last month, found that renewable energy could be cheaper then nuclear. Electricity from renewables like wind and solar would require large-scale investment, but would not significantly raise the price of electricity, the WWF said. “That price increase – if we used renewable electricity to supply 15 percent of our electricity – would in 2020 be 15 percent higher than if we continued building coal power stations. This compares to a 20 percent increase if we pursued the nuclear alternative.
The Independent Democrats political party said in a statement that it was “very pleased” that the government had decided not to proceed with its proposed nuclear energy expansion programme because it would have saddled South Africa with enormous foreign debt and contributed very little to local job creation.
The party said money should be invested in renewable energy, most of which could be built by local industries and create jobs.
The 2003 White Paper on Renewable Energy set a target of 10,000GWh hours by 2013. But we’re a far cry from meeting these targets and the finance minister has reportedly said that he’s not convinced of the economic case for large-scale renewable energy projects in South Africa, hence the focus on nukes and coal
But now that nukes have become prohibitively expensive and with a bit of pressure from the MPs and the enviro groups, hopefully the government and Eskom will start looking a lot more seriously at investing in renewable energy alternatives.
Wind tubine pic licenced under Creative Commons licence Attribution Share Alike 2.0 Generic
Zapiro’s take on our water crisis
December 3, 2008
Posted in Green News
This Zapiro cartoon on the CSIR water report saga is on the Mail & Guardian website today. I think it’s so good, I just have to share it. You’ll find the original here.
Design an ecofriendly bag for Pick n Pay
December 2, 2008
Posted in Lifestyle
Pick n Pay is looking for amateur designers to create a design for new ecofriendly bags that may be sold in stores around the country. You have until January 5 2009 to come up with something stylish and desirable. Thousands of rands worth of prizes are up for grabs. For everything you need to know about entering or voting for your favourite design, go to Pick n Pay‘s website.
A case of shooting the messenger?
December 2, 2008
Posted in Green News
Water with a dense growth of algae. (Pic courtesy DWAF National Eutrophication Monitoring Programme)
THE fiasco at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) over the suspension of one of its senior researchers, Dr Anthony Turton is a public relations disaster for the national science council.
Dr Turton, an internationally respected scientist, was suspended for insubordination shortly after being told, at the last minute, that he could not deliver the keynote address on water quality at the CSIR’s Science Real and Relevant conference in Pretoria.
Dr Turton was to give the talk, entitled “Three Strategic Water Quality Challenges that Decision-Makers Need to Know About and How the CSIR Should Respond”, on Tuesday November 14, but was told the day before, that it had been pulled from the conference. He told the Cape Times:
“I was told it had been pulled, and I was instructed not to be on the premises. I was given three different reasons by three different people.”
There has been much speculation in the media that the paper was withdrawn in an attempt to gag Turton and “shield the government and [the CSIR] from criticism”. According to one report, Turton’s presentation was withdrawn partly because it was potentially offensive to “members of the liberation movement”.
It has all been said before
Last Thursday, at a media conference, Dr Sibusiso Sibisi, the CSIR’s president and CEO, denied that the CSIR had tried to gag Dr Turton. “There was nothing profound in the [research] paper, it has all been said before by scientists and even parliamentarians,” he said.
The CSIR said it wasn’t Dr Turton’s report Dr Sibisi had a problem with, it was his slide presentation and, in particular, images he had used in it that were “inappropriate”, such as of a “necklacing” (an execution using a burning tyre).
Another visual mentioned by the CSIR was of a child with a birth defect with the statement that she lived in an area affected by mining waste. This made a “strong inference from a single data point”. According to the CSIR, this “showed poor links between cause and effect”.
Previously, Dr Turton had told the media that he had offered to make changes to his paper, but that this was turned down. The CSIR said that there wasn’t time to make the necessary changes. (See Sunday Times Q&A with Dr Sibisi)
Inappropriate statements to the media
According to the CSIR, the reason why Dr Turton was then suspended from his position in the council’s natural resources and environment unit was because he had made “inappropriate statements to the media” and had brought the council into disrepute.
But it seems that Dr Turton did not go to the media originally with the story that his presentation had been pulled from the conference. This was done by an environmental activist who was concerned that it was an attempt to suppress the information in Dr Turton’s report about the looming water crisis in South Africa. The paper had reportedly been circulated to scientists, NGOs and others about two months before the conference.
Surely to withdraw Dr Turton’s presentation from the conference at the last minute and then ban him from the premises is a drastic step to take against a senior researcher. And, it is no way to treat a respected scientist. It’s little wonder that Dr Turton has been trying to defend his reputation as a scientist in the media.
In an interview he did that’s posted on Zoopy.com (to view click on image above), Dr Turton says that it was never his intention to bring the CSIR into disrepute and that he, in fact, holds the organisation in the highest regard.
The issue even reached Parliament, where the National Council of Provinces (Parliament’s second chamber) voted on Friday in favour of Dr Turton’s reinstatement to the CSIR, according to the Cape Times.
Widespread support
Dr Turton has had widespread support in the media. A petition calling for him to be reinstated in his position, initiated by the Federation for a Sustainable Environment, a local NGO, has been doing the rounds, reportedly gathering “hundreds of signatures”. And the Cape Times has reported that a US environmental scientist has said that he is drafting an international petition of scientists and researchers in support of Dr Turton.
There have also been calls for the CSIR to hold an urgent internal inquiry into what one article described as the “incoherent and authoritarian behaviour” of elements of its own management. The South African National Editors’ Forum said that it suspected the CSIR’s action against Turton was motivated by political considerations and it also called for an independent inquiry.
Last week Dr Turton extended an olive branch to the CSIR. He said he didn’t like being in the limelight and wanted to get back to work as “a humble scientist”. But the CSIR obviously did not take up Dr Turton’s offer because at the weekend there were reports that he has asked his lawyers to “seek an amicable termination of his employment relationship”.
This is bad news indeed. Surely the CSIR cannot afford to lose one of its top scientists where there is already a severe shortage of qualified people working on the country’s water issues. It needs to attract – and keep – the best scientists in the country. After the dramas of the past fortnight, will it be able to do that?
SA’s LOOMING WATER CRISIS: WHAT THE REPORT SAID
Here are some of the main points in Dr Turton’s paper, “Three Strategic Water Quality Challenges that Decision-Makers Need to Know About and How the CSIR Should Respond”.
- South Africa has no more surplus water. The country receives an average of 497mm/year of rain, compared to a global average of 860mm/yr. And 98 percent of the water capacity has already by allocated. There is very little surplus. Water scarcity is a fundamental constraint on development and social wellbeing.
- South Africa has lost its dilution capacity which means that pollutants and effluent streams will need to be treated to ever-higher standards before being discharged into communal waters or deposited in landfills.
- All South Africa’s cities and major centres of economic development are on watershed divides, rather than near rivers, lakes or the seashore as is the global norm. This means that major engineering and technology are needed to move water to these centres, and liquid waste effluent from the cities degrades the water quality.
- South Africa has a history of violence and disrespect for human rights, and the country’s science is embedded in this legacy. Water scarcity could lead to social conflict. Turton used images of this year’s xenophobic attacks to illustrate the violence that might happen if one day water becomes scarce enough to fight over.
- South Africa lacks the scientific, engineering and technical capacity to deal with looming water problems.
On this Turton wrote:
“…we have mobilized masses of Technical Ingenuity to move water from distant river basins and mine minerals from ever greater depths. But these have caused second-order problems – the so-called revenge effects – such as loss of ecological integrity in aquatic systems arising from inter-basin transfers and increased levels of pollution from radionuclides, heavy metals and sulphates arising from mining.”
This Technical Ingenuity has helped us develop our national economy despite water and energy constraints. But now we have new challenges, says Turton. The demand for technical ingenuity now far outweighs the supply and this affects the country’s ability to solve pressing scientific problems.
- The CSIR’s funding model, which now relies on private contracts more then government funding, has had a “catastrophic effect on our national [scientific, engineering and technical] capacity”.
He adds:
“Significantly, we cannot import those technical solutions because, in the case of microcystin as an example, there are few other places in the world where there are similar levels of toxin in the national water resources (China is an exception), so there is simply no need in most countries to solve this specific problem with the same urgency that we are confronted by.”
- A lack of investment in operation, maintenance and skilled human capacity will result in the collapse of the country’s water infrastructure.
- A significant proportion of South Africa has no civil engineering professional support in a local authority, particularly in rural areas.
- There are more certified professional engineers nearing retirement than there are entering the profession. There is a gap in the age group 35 to 49, which is the group most affected by affirmative action employment rules – many of these engineers have left the country.
- Incentives are not in place to attract and retain qualified engineers to research councils, national and provincial governments.
Particular water quality challenges
- Acid mine drainage – SA has a legacy of heavy metal and radionuclide contamination in rivers flowing out of most gold mining areas, wrote Turton. Coal mining also causes AMD. South Africa has never done a high-confidence study of off-mine populations to determine what the impact has been from chronic exposure to heavy metals and radionculides, he wrote.
- Eutrophication – South Africa is faced with levels of eutrophication that are “almost unprecedented globally”, wrote Turton.
Eutrophication can result in excessive growth in algae (cyanobateria, or blue-green algae) and aquatic weeds (such as water hyacinth).
The load of microcystins in our water, which are produced by cyanobacteria, is “among the highest in the world”, says Turton. We need to know if microcystins are causing human health problems, specifically in communities that are immune-compromised (such as HIV).
- Endocrine disrupting chemicals in our water supply are a growing problem in South Africa. Our dilution loss means that EDCs are being recycled without being removed.
- As are partially metabolised medication – “we are gong to be seeing higher levels of antiretrovirals in our rivers, which by implication means that these complex chemical compounds will be entering the human population over time, either through the drinking water stream or via produce that has been irrigated with contaminated water. “Nowhere else in the world is there a coincidence of loss of dilution and high levels of ARV use as in this country.”
- We also need to understand the exact linkages between climate change and cyanobacteria and whether climate change will nudge any of our aquatic ecosystmems into catastrophic collapse.
