US firm plans to make cement from power station emissions
August 11, 2008
Posted in Business
A company in California says it can turn the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by power stations into cement by bubbling it through sea water, Scientific American reports.
The company, called Calera, is preparing to open its first cement plant next door to a gas-fired power station on the California coast.
The cement-making process could be a way of killing two birds with one stone by reducing the geenhouse gas emissions of two highly polluting industries at one time. According to US Environmental Protection Agency, making one ton of cement results in about 1 ton of carbon dioxide.
The Calera process “essentially mimics marine cement, which is produced by coral when making their shells and reefs, taking the calcium and magnesium in seawater and using it to form carbonates at normal temperatures and pressures”, SciAm writes. Read more
Solar windows could soon tap into sun’s power
July 22, 2008
Posted in Renewable energy
Windows that not only let sunlight into buildings but also use it to generate electricity may be a commercial reality in as little as three years’ time, MIT reports.
A research team at the US university has found a way to concentrate solar energy onto solar cells situated around the edge of a pane of glass or plastic.
A mixture of dyes is painted onto the glass or plastic. “The dyes work together to absorb light across a range of wavelengths, which is then re-emitted at a different wavelength and transported across the pane to waiting solar cells at the edges,” the MIT report says.
Similar technology was developed in the the 1970s, but it was abandoned. But the research team has brought it back to life using techniques developed for lasers and organic light-emitting diodes.
The research team’s solar concentrator technology can increase the power obtained from solar cells by a factor of over 40, the university reports. Read more
Greenpeace blockades Australian power plant
July 3, 2008
Posted in Renewable energy
Twenty-seven Greenpeace activists have blocked the coal supply to the Eraring power plant in New South Wales, Australia, by locking on to the conveyor. Eraring is Australia’s most polluting coal-fired power plant, says Greenpeace.
“Eraring, an old and inefficient plant, is one of eight coal-fired power stations in New South Wales. These plants are responsible for half the state’s and 13 percent of Australia’s greenhouse pollution. Eraring is the biggest culprit, sending nearly 20 million tonnes of greenhouse pollution into the atmosphere every year. Each hour we blockade the coal supply, we will prevent 2,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide being released,” said Greenpeace Australia climate and energy campaigner Simon Roz.
Greenpeace is calling on Australia’s Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to deliver policies that support renewable power so that Australia can immediately start replacing old and dirty coal-fired power. Part of that support should be a robust emissions trading scheme designed to deliver substantial cuts in greenhouse pollution quickly.
“We have to stop fuelling climate change when creating electricity,” said Roz. Read more
New coal-fired power plant for Mozambique
July 3, 2008
Posted in Green News
A new 2,000MW coal-fired power station is to be built in the northern Tete province of Mozambique, Reuters reports. Australian coal mining company Riverside Mining has obtained licences to start building the R2-billion plant. The feasibliity study will reportedly be finished by December and construction should start early next year. It looks like 500MW will be exported to South Africa, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia. Read more on Engineering News
2010 launch set for GM’s all-electric car – and SA’s making one too
June 4, 2008
Posted in Transport
General Motors has announced that it’s all-electric car, the Chevy Volt, will be launched in 2010 and will be in showrooms (in the US, presumably) by the end of that year, Reuters reports.
The Volt will be powered entirely by an electric motor and have a lithium-ion battery pack that can be charged through an ordinary plug point. The car will be designed to travel for about 60km on its battery pack – which is apparently enough for the average daily commute in America. For longer trips, the Volt has a “range-extending power source” which “kicks in to recharge the lithium-ion battery pack as required”, says the Chevrolet.com website. This will last for around 1,000km, the site says. The car should also be able to reach a top speed of at least 100km.
Reuters says Toyota is also racing to market its own plug-in hybrid by 2010 using the same technology.
The full-charge cycle should take about three hours at 220V, gm-volt.com reports. It’s all very nice in theory, considering how the petrol price is rocketing, but the big question is whether South Africa’s power monopoloy Eskom would be able to cope with the demands electric cars would put on the grid – even if they were charged at night.
Peet du Plooy of the WWF was interviewed by summit TV earlier this year when the WWF’s report “Plugged in, the end of the oil age” was released. He said that electric vehicles cost a tenth of the price to run over time and an added advantage is that electricity is generated locally, whereas South Africa imports its oil. He also said that if you compared turning coal into electricity with turning coal into liquid fuel (as Sasol does), the electric car would go three times further with the same amount of fuel.
He also said, that in South Africa, Optimal Energy of Cape Town, which had received government funding from the Innovation Fund, was looking to go into production with an electric vehicle in 2010.
The deputy science and technology minister, Derek Hanekom, was reported in Saturday’s The Weekender as saying that the first prototype of the South African-designed car would be unveiled by early next year.
The reports says that the batteries will be imported from China and that the six-seater passenger vehicle would have a range of between 100km and 400km. And, here’s a bonus, “the roof would have solar panels to help charge the battery when it is parked in the sun”. Now, there’s a good idea for sunny South Africa.
How a locally made vehicle would compete with vehicles made by well-known car manufacturers’ on the market, is another matter.
New ‘climate bonds’ could help SA meet clean energy targets
May 29, 2008
Posted in Renewable energy
The United Nations is considering a new type of bond to help developing countries finance renewable energy projects, Bloomberg reports.
Yvo de Boer, the UN’s top climate change official, said yesterday that the idea was that “climate bonds” would be sold to investors by developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. They would simplify the funding of wind farm and solar projects and encourage investment in nations struggling to meet their renewable-energy targets, de Boer said.
The plan had not yet been presented to countries or investors, de Boer said.
Simplifying the funding of renewable energy projects would be good news for South Africa which has got off to a slow start in meeting its renewable energy target of 10 000 GWh/year renewable energy consumption by 2013.
For example, Business Report recently reported that Eskom was struggling to find investors for its 100MW concentrating solar power demonstration plant in Upington.
The CSP plant will cost R5-billion, of which Eskom can put up R3-billion. It is looking for partners to fund the remaining R2-billion, the report said.
Eskom’s other renewable energy project, a 100MW wind farm in the Western Cape, received a R1.4-billion loan from the French Development Agency which will reportedly cover most of the costs. According to BR, it is expected to be operational in 2010.
The country’s first commercial wind farm, with a 5.2MW capacity, was officially switched on on Friday.
Read the full report on Bloomberg
Cape Town to sell SA’s first wind power
May 28, 2008
Posted in Renewable energy
The City of Cape Town plans to sell green electricity from July, according to the city’s website.
The electricity will be supplied by the Darling Wind Farm, which was officially switched on last Friday by the minerals and energy minister, Bulyewa Sonjica. It is South Africa’s first commercial wind farm, situated in the town of Darling, 70km from Cape Town.
The wind farm’s four 1.3MW turbines can generate 5.2MW of electricity. There are plans to add six more 1.3MW turbines in the future, bringing the total capacity to 13MW.
The electricity produced by the wind farm will be added to the national grid and sold to the City of Cape Town as part of a long-term power purchase agreement. This will go towards the city’s target of sourcing 10% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020.
The city will sell the electricity to customers interested in buying sustainable energy “initially at a premium (surcharge) of 25c/kWh above the cost of conventional electricity”, according to the city’s website.
The Darling Wind Farm is a R75-million national demonstration project developed by a group consisting of private developers, including Darling Independent Power Producer, the Central Energy Fund and the Development Bank of Southern Africa. The Danish International Development Assistance programme provided a third of the funding in the form of a grant.
Over its 20-year predicted life span, the Darling Wind Farm will reportedly save 142,500 tons of coal and 370-million litres of water. It will also reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 258,100 tons, sulphur dioxide by 2,200 tons, nitric oxide by 1,100 tons, particulates by 58 tons and ash by 42,200 tons.
To find out more about buying Cape Town’s green electricity, click here
Via: IOL
and Engineering News
Toyota spends millions on solar power in Durban
April 29, 2008
Posted in Business, Renewable energy, Transport
Toyota‘s manufacturing plant in Durban is installing solar energy in a R3.5-million project that is expected to save the company R95,000 a month on energy costs, according a media release.
The car manufacturer had already installed 150 solar panels by June 2007 and has plans to install another 120 of them. So, by the end of 2008, Toyota will have installed 270 solar panels into its Durban plant, says the release.
It does not specify how much electricity the solar panels will generate or what percentage of the plant’s total electricity consumption the solar power will replace. But it does say that “the company’s Prospecton plant in Durban used electricity and gas to heat water, it will now use energy converted from the sun as a source of heat.”
The solar panels will allow the car manufacturer to lower its carbon dioxide emissions by about 1,350 tons a year.
It will also help to reduce the impact of Eskom’s “load shedding” on the company’s operations.
Source: Mediaweb.co.za
Why should Eskom have all the power?
April 7, 2008
Posted in Renewable energy
In an interesting comment piece in Business Day recently, Sarah Ward of Sustainable Energy Africa, wrote that “there is nothing like a crisis for opening the doors for much needed change”. It’s hard to conceive of the energy crisis, that neither the government nor Eskom – the utility that produces 96 percent of South Africa’s electricity – appears to be prepared to take responsibility for, as an opportunity, but Ward writes that we are at a point in time when “we can change SA’s energy picture forever, and for the better”.
The way to do this, she writes, is for cities to take charge of their own energy and develop “energy pictures” that suit their own unique needs. This is a move away from the “one-size-fits-all shoe” they have historically had to accept because it is all that has been made available by Eskom, she writes. Power has been centralised and the country has been “force-fed” and “become heavily addicted to, big power from one utility and one source of energy (electricity from coal power)”.
Nuclear is Eskom’s “clean” energy alternative of choice and it is set to become a major part of our energy future. But renewables and energy efficiently don’t seem to be taken nearly seriously enough.
Ward gives examples of how cities could power their own futures:
• Substantial energy supplies are provided by locally available sources (ocean, wind, sun, waste ) by several utilities;
• Energy efficiency is heavily incentivised (it is much cheaper to save electricity than to make it) and the “polluter pays” principle is applied;
• Safe and affordable energy sources are available to the poor and industry is encouraged to produce and purchase clean power;
• Local government buildings are retrofitted for energy saving and staff are given incentives to reduce their energy consumption;
• Waste is turned into useful energy; and
• All residential areas glitter with solar water heaters.
She writes that a number of South African cities already have strategies – which is very exciting news – but she adds that the real struggle is now implementing them. She has ideas on what is needed to help cities take charge, which you can read in the original article.
As an ordinary South African I’ve never lived in a city that didn’t only receive electricity from one utility; I saw a solar panel in operation in a home for the first time a few months ago; and if you’d asked me a year ago what co-generation was, I’d probably have answered something to do with artificial insemination. What exactly the empowered cities Ward talks about would look like would have been very hard to imagine if a couple of months ago I hadn’t come across something on the Internet called EffienCity.
It’s a fabulous interactive city created by Greenpeace UK that explains what decentralised energy is and how it works in practice. Using video case studies, animations and slide shows, it shows how real cities around the world are using decentralised energy . “As a result, they’re enjoying lower greenhouse gas emissions, a more secure energy supply, cheaper electricity and heating bills and a whole new attitude towards energy,” says Greenpeace.
Ward says one of the key projects cities should be implementing is informing and educating residents and business. She’s right, many South Africans still see renewable energy as expensive, unreliable, and science-fiction. It’s very enlightening to see what other cities around the world are doing.
Concerns over East African hydroelectric project
April 5, 2008
Posted in Renewable energy
The sustainability of a new hydroelectric dam proposed by Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania is being questioned, the Bank Information Centre reports. The proposed 60MW dam at Rusumo Falls on the Kagera River would provide 20MW of electricity to each of the three countries, Reuters reports. This electricity would boost mining production in western Tanzania and spur nickel mining in Burundi, a country whose economic development is being hindered by electricty shortages, according to Reuters.
But, the BIC reports, because it is in an area prone to drought, particularly with the onset of climate change, there are doubts about whether the project will produce the expected capacity. A Rwandan newspaper, New Times, noted that “when drought hit the Great Lakes Region in 2004, the water levels in lakes and rivers dropped. Power production reduced leaving most cities in the region in darkness”, the BIC reports.
The dam also could entail the resettlement of about 7,000 people, which raises questions about its potential effects on the livelihoods of people living in the area and their access to land, the BIC reports.
The three governments are looking to the World Bank and the African Development Bank to fund the project.
Via :: Pambuzuka
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