SA electric car to be mass produced by 2012
April 3, 2009
Posted in Transport
Cape Town-based Optimal Energy plans to mass produce its fully electric vehicle, Joule, in South Africa from 2012, but we can expect to see pilot fleets on our roads and internationally from next year, the company says.
The company has raised the industrialisation capital from a share issue to the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) and from the Innovation Fund, the technology investment division of the department of science and technology. It intends raising more private capital towards the end of 2009.
“Interest in the vehicle has been enormous both at a local and international level,” said Kobus Meiring, Optimal Energy’s CEO.
“We are in the process of selecting a site for our first assembly and manufacturing plant. The location of the plant will be announced later this year,” he said.
Green tip: Get away for a weekend
April 3, 2009
Posted in Green tips, Lifestyle
Swimming in the river at Mountain Sanctuary Park
The best way to appreciate nature is to get out there and experience it. This may seem obvious, but it’s very easy to get caught up in the daily grind and suddenly you realise that you haven’t been out of the city for so long you can’t remember when you last smelt fresh air or woke up to the racket birds make in the morning.
My husband and I work mostly from home and, although there are many benefits, like not having to sit in traffic for hours every day, one of the few disadvantages is that the work day never ends. It’s not like you can leave your work at the office, it’s there all the time, seven days a week. It’s hard to stop yourself from quickly checking your email.
So we’ve decided that we need to try to get away once a month and our mission is to find nice places to stay that are within 200km of the city. We’ve also opted for camping because it’s cheaper and, with no TV or laptops, we can fully appreciate the joys of nature.
Our first trip was to Mountain Sanctuary Park in the Magaliesburg, about 120km from Jozi. It’s one of those places I’ve been hearing about for years, but never got round to visiting. I’m sorry now that I took so long to “discover” it because it’s lovely for a weekend break.
The campsite is big with lots of shade trees and grass and you can book a site with electricity if you struggle without an electric kettle. There are braais and clean bathrooms, a gorgeous pool with a view and a small shop that stocks a few basics. It has quite strict rules about noise and cars, which means you won’t be kept awake till all hours by somebody else’s loud music.
You might be kept awake be somebody else’s children though. It seems to be a favourite weekend spot for families with young children.
You can burn off pent up energy walking in the mountains. You’ll encounter lots of groups wearing sensible shoes and hats and carrying walking sticks. It seems to be popular with mountain bikers as well. My favourite excursions are short and end at one of the two rivers that run through the park. One has easily accesssible shallow pools with natural rock slides that are fun for kids to swim in or for adults to wallow in. The water is crystal clear and tastes delicious – as only a mountain stream can.
The other river is less child friendly, edged mostly by steep cliffs. It’s very pretty and great fun to explore, and there are pools you can bathe in. But tread carefully, the rocks can be very slippery.
We only camped for one night, but next time – which I have no doubt will be soon – we’ll stay for two. Camping has a way of forcing you to slow down and a weekend of mountain air and exercise charges your batteries.
If you don’t like camping, you have the option to stay in a chalet.
A view down a footpath to the campsite among the trees
Week that was: April 3 2009
April 3, 2009
Posted in Green News
Environmentalist protestors at the G20 summit in London by celesteh licensed under Creative Commons
- LEADING BY EXAMPLE: The G20 summit disappointingly didn’t produce a green recovery package, but US President Barack Obama did say that the United States would lead by example in combating climate change. “If China and India with their populations had the same energy usage as the average American then we would all have melted by now,” he told a news conference. “China and India … justifiably chafe at the idea that they should somehow sacrifice their development for our efforts to control climate change.”
- IT’S NOT ENOUGH: Draft climate legislation unveiled in the US this week was reportedly welcomed by green groups at the UN climate talks in Bonn. The law calls for a cut of 3 percent from 2005 levels in greenhouse emissions by 2012, 20 percent by 2020, 42 percent by 2030 and 83 percent by 2050. The European Union has agreed cuts of 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, and of 30 percent if other developed nations followed suit. Obama’s cuts would to only take emissions back to 1990 levels by 2020, say reports. The UN climate panel says developed countries would have to cut emissions by between 25 and 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 to avoid the worst of climate change.
- IT’S THE LITTLE THINGS: Scientists have trained a genetically engineered virus to make a more efficient and powerful lithium battery. More on and BBC
- GM MAIZE PROBLEM: Of the 1,000 South African farmers who planted Monsanto’s GM-maize this year, 280 suffered extensive crop failure, writes Rapport. The plants, grown from three varieties of GM maize, apparently looked healthy but failed to produce seeds. According to the report, Monsanto said a mistake had been made in the laboratory and the company immediately offered to compensate farmers in Mpumalanga, Free State and North West. Marian Mayet, director of the anti-GM Africa Centre for Biosecurity, called for an urgent government investigation and an immediate ban on all GM-foods.
- COTTONING ON TO ORGANIC: Global sales of organic cotton clothing and home textile products rose by 63 percent last year to $3.2 billion, according to the Organic Cotton Market Report. The amount of organic cotton farmers grew worldwide in 2007/08 increased by 152 percent. Organic cotton is grown without the use of fertilisers, pesticides or genetically modified seeds. (Reuters)
- FISH OIL AND FLATULENCE: Researchers at an Irish university have found that adding fish oil to the diet of cattle reduces the methane emissions they emit via flatulence. Methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. More than a third of all methane emissions, about 900 billion tonnes every year, are produced by bacteria in the digestive systems of ruminants such as cattle, sheep and goats, the researchers say. (Science Daily)
- DOLPHINS: THE GOOD NEWS: A stronghold of rare Irrawaddy fresh-water dolphins, numbering nearly 6,000 individuals, has been found in Bangladesh’s Sundarbans mangrove forest by researchers from the World Conservation Society. Last year the dolphins were listed as vulnerable on the IUCN red list.
- ... AND THE NOT SO GOOD NEWS: Mass dolphin and whale beachings could become more frequent because of climate change, say researchers in Australia. More than 500 whales and dolphins have beached in southern Australia in the past four months. Scientists say that changing ocean current cycles are at the root of the beachings. (AFP)
- SASOL CDM PROJECT GETS A NO: A United Nations panel has rejected a Clean Development Mechanism application for a Sasol project to replace coal with natural gas piped from Mozambique as a feedstock for its Secunda synthetic fuel plant. Sasol had argued that the project would result in a significant reduction of greenhouse gases. (Engineering News)
- SA SETS CARBON CAPTURE TARGET: South Africa expects to build its first carbon capture and storage pilot by 2020, Bulyelwa Sonjica, the minister of minerals and energy, was reported as saying at the launch of a new carbon capture and storage centre. Sasol and Eskom, the country’s biggest emitters, Anglo American’s coal unit, Exxaro, Xstrata Coal and the British and Norwegian governments are all part of the project. The centre has R25-million in funds. (Reuters)
Join a community drive to clean up the Jukskei River
April 2, 2009
Posted in Lifestyle
Stretch of the Jukskei River. Photo by NJR ZA. Licenced under Creative Commons licence
A group of volunteers in Douglasdale in northern Johannesburg have decided to start a clean up campaign on the Klein Jukskei River and want other people in the community to get involved.
“It is in a state of absolute filth. The banks of the river are disgustingly littered with household rubbish,” says Candice Smith, who organised the clean-up campaign.
Candice is a firm believer in the idea that if a group of people work together for the collective good then change is inevitable.
“I am rounding up support in my complex, trying to get the residents involved and I would like to extend this to the rest of the community that makes use of the area (dog walkers, kids, etc). Although currently not many people want to use it and, frankly, I don’t blame them.”
But think of the “Broken Windows” theory, says Candice. If a building has a few broken windows that are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building. The same could apply to a river where litter accumulates. Eventually, people may even start dumping bags of rubbish there.
“What impact would this have on the surrounding community?” Candice asks. “We can’t continue to sit back and allow it to be someone else’s problem.”
Candice has gathered together a team of volunteers who will meet once a month to clean up the river banks. It’s not just a chance to do something for the environment, it’s a great way to get to know the people in your community, she says.
The first community clean up effort is going to be on Saturday, April 4, at 9h00.
If you’re interested in joining in, the group plans to meet outside the new Covenant Church Complex along Hornbill Road. You can contact Candice on 082 442 0068 or candice.smith[at]caterplus[dot]co[dot]za.
“Small acts can and will lead to big changes!”
Is this the dawning of the age of alternatives?
April 1, 2009
Posted in Renewable energy
The renewable energy feed-in tariffs announced by the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) yesterday appear to have been well received by industry players.
The tariff guidelines set the price renewable energy suppliers will be paid for a unit of electricity and they need to be high enough to encourage investment in the industry. Until recently, renewable energy had to compete with South Africa’s incredibly cheap (but very dirty) electricity from coal. There were no incentives for renewable energy investors. So it’s not surprising that, at present, South Africa has only one operating wind farm which produces 5MW of electricity.
But in 2004 South Africa set a renewable energy target of 10,000GWh by 2013 and to meet this target it needs to kickstart the industry and get things moving quickly. The tarrifs announced yesterday are perhaps a sign of a commitment to increase the role of renewables in the energy mix. They are a significant improvement on those in the consultation paper released by Nersa in December, which had been criticised for being too low to encourage investment.
Under Nersa’s new tariff guidelines, developers will receive R1,25/kWh for wind (up 65c/kWh), 90c/kWh for landfill gas (up from 43c), 94c/kWh for small hydro (up from 73c) and R2,10/kWh for concentrated solar power (up from 65c).
To give you something to compare this to: on my January electricity bill, I was charged about 40c/kWh. But Eskom’s prices will increase and a levy on electricity generated from non-renewable sources is likely to come into effect sometime this year.
The power purchase agreement with suppliers will last for 20 years and the tariffs will be reviewed every year for five years and every three years after that. Eskom, the state energy utility, will act as the renewable energy power purchasing agency.
Don’t rush out to buy solar panels to generate electricity on your roof, though. The new tariffs don’t mean that ordinary households will soon be able to generate electricity from rooftop photovoltaics and get reimbursed for feeding it back into the grid. Nersa’s feed-in tariffs exclude photovoltaic panels and biomass generation. The regulator’s focus appears to be on utility-scale generation.
Consumers will most likely have to bear the increased cost of renewable energy – but at least we can look forward to some alternatives to coal and nuclear in the future.
April 1 is Fossil Fools Day
March 31, 2009
Posted in Green News
Fancy yourself as a bit of an activist? Well, why not join in Fossil Fools Day? Tomorrow from 12pm to 2pm environmental activists will be marking April 1 by handing over this year’s South African Fossil Fool of 2009 Award to Sasol at their head office in Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg.
The award is Earthlife Africa’s way of highlighting the role Sasol plays in warming our planet.
It takes hard work, years of application, and significant capital investment to win a Fossil Fool Award, says Earthlife.
Sasol has been chosen as this year’s winner because:
- It produces 72.6 million tonnes of greenhouse gases annually; total annual greenhouse gas emissions for South Africa are 446-million tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent.
- It’s planning to build a new 80,000 barrels/day coal-to-liquids plant in South Africa. This would add an estimated 23-million to 37-million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere on an annual basis.
- And it fixed prices of its goods, both in South Africa and Europe.
Click here for more on Fossil Fools Day globally
Get out the house, go to a green market
March 31, 2009
Posted in Lifestyle
Pretoria’s botanical garden is a fabulous place to spend a lovely autumn day. There are hundreds of big trees to sit under and picnic and, just outside the entrance gate, there’s a restaurant with an outside balcony that has a great view over a pond and the gardens.
This Saturday morning you have the perfect excuse to visit the gardens because the Green market just happens to be on (April 4). It happens on every first Saturday of the month.
This week’s theme is Reduce.Reuse.Recycle and the organisers are calling on all artists/entrepreneurs to come and sell/exhibit all their creative arts products made from recycled materials. “We need revamped clothes (clothes made new with old clothes etc), scrap metal arts, handmade paper, plastic, tin, glass and electronic waste arts and products … and so much more,” they say.
So if you’re interested in taking part or know of someone who might be interested – you may want to give a speech on recycling or give a creative educational demo, for instance – send an email to Melissa at greenmelilly [at] gmail [dot] com. Or just pack a picnic basket and go and commune with nature for a while.
Earth Hour was fun, let’s do it more often
March 31, 2009
Posted in Lifestyle
Tapei 101 building, via Boston.com
I decided to measure my household’s contribution to Earth Hour on Saturday to get an idea of what switching off my lights for an hour could potentially mean for the planet. (I have an energy monitor called The Owl.) Turns out that my household consumption dropped by 250 watts. In South Africa, this means that 24kg less carbon dioxide was pumped into the air because of me. (In SA, 0.978kg of CO2 are emitted for every 1 kWh of electricity).
To be honest, we did go a bit further than switching off the lights. We also switched off two PCs and the television. We lit some candles inside the house and sat on the back steps looking at the stars, enjoying a very peaceful evening – and a family conversation! It’s amazing what can happen when there’s no TV.
In fact, it was so nice that we’ve decided to do it more often.
My 250W saving is apparently the equivalent of planting 0.1 trees. So if I switched off my lights for an hour once a month for a year, it would be the equivalent of planting a tree.
Apparently more than 1,000 cities took part in Earth Hour. Click here for an amazing collection of Earth Hour “before and during” pics from around the world.
State electricity utility Eskom says that South Africans “contributed 400MW of electricity savings to Earth Hour”. That’s 10 percent of the output of a whole power station – Witbank’s Kendal power station, for example, produces around 4,100MW.
It’s also a saving of 400 tons of carbon dioxide, 224 tons of coal and some 576 kilolitres of water, says Dr Steve Lennon, Eskom’s MD for corporate services and its “climate change champion”.
“The 400MW translates to about 4 million 100W bulbs or 6,7 million 60W bulbs switched off on Saturday. This shows a concerted effort by approximately 1 million households,” he said.
Can anyone seriously say that it isn’t worth taking part in Earth Hour?
(Update: Corrected a typo to read: That’s 10 percent of the output of a whole power station – Witbank’s Kendal power station, for example, produces around 4,100MW)
1972 Datsun is world’s fastest electric car
March 30, 2009
Posted in Transport
It’s hard to believe, but click on the clip above and you’ll see it for yourself. A 1972 Datsun, which has been lovingly converted into an electric vehicle, can thrash muscle cars on the drag strip.
The speedy 37-year-old, named the White Zombie by its owner/creator John Waylands, can reportedly do 0 to 90kph in just 3 seconds. Its internal combustion engine with an output of 69hp has been replaced by a custom-built electric set-up and 60 lead batteries, which produce 300hp.
But apparently it’s not the horse power that makes the difference when it comes to electric motors, it’s all in the torque. Electric cars get full torque from the first instant so they can fly out of the starting blocks and leave the competition spluttering in their tyre smoke.
Via :: Gas 2.0
I hope this answers at least some of the 17 questions left by Samuel in a comment on an earlier electric car story.
Call for action: sign up for Earth Hour
March 24, 2009
Posted in Green News
In four days, on Saturday March 28, lights will be switched off for an hour all over the world at 8.30pm as a sign of support for our overexploited Earth. This year one of the aims of the WWF’s Earth Hour is to send a petition of 1-billion names to the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen in December. It is at this meeting that the countries of the world will agree (we hope) to an international response to climate change.
By signing up for the WWF’s Earth Hour campaign you add your name to a global call for effective action to combat climate change.
UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon said that Earth Hour promised to be “the largest demonstration of public concern about climate change ever attempted”.
“Earth Hour is a way for citizens of the world to send a clear message.
They want action on climate change.”
So now is your chance to make yourself heard. All you need to do to add your name to this call is to go to the Earth Hour website and sign up. And then on Saturday at 8.30pm, switch off you lights for an hour. Use the time to have a cosy candle-lit dinner or lie on a blanket outside and look at the stars.
Earth Hour started in Australia in 2007, when 2.2-million people and more than 2,100 businesses switched off their lights in Sydney for an hour. Energy consumption reportedly dropped by 10.2 percent for the period – the equivalent of taking 48,000 cars off the road for a year, says the WWF. In 2008, 50-million people around the world switched off their lights for Earth Hour. This year the WWF hopes to reach 1-billion people in 1,000 cities around the world.
In South Africa, an official WWF Earth Hour celebration will be held at the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town. The Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra will be among the entertainment lined up and mayor Helen Zille will switch off Table Mountain’s lights for the occasion.
In Johannesburg, an Earth Hour party is planned for Nelson Mandela Square in Sandton.
For more information on Earth Hour in South Africa go to the Earth Hour website.
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