Week that was – March 8 2009
March 8, 2009
Posted in Green News
CLIMATE CONFERENCE EXCEEDS EXPECTATIONS
More than 700 delegates from government, business, labour, academia and civil society got together to discuss South Africa’s climate change policy this week in Midrand, north of Johannesburg. Designed to “translate political will and the best available scientific evidence into policy and action”, the summit was the start of a participatory process that will culminate in a policy White Paper on climate change by 2010 and a legislative, regulatory and fiscal package by 2012.
But first a draft document that will set out “slightly more than the skeleton” of a climate change policy will be produced by August This will be consulted widely and inform what South Africa takes into the international climate negotiations in Copenhagen in December.
Renewable energy and energy efficiency comprised a strong theme coming out of the conference. The minister of environmental affairs and tourism, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, said in a statement that “early gains can be achieved by massively up-scaling our efforts in respect of energy efficiency and renewable energy”.
But the country’s energy mix was a hotly contested issue. Coal accounts for more than 90 percent of electricity at present – but Cabinet will have the final say on whether coal’s role in the energy mix will decrease. And more technical work and a policy process that allows all views to be expressed is needed before a Cabinet decision can be made, Joanne Yawitch, a deputy director-general in the department of environmental affairs and tourism, told the media.
South African President Kgalema Motlanthe said that acting now on climate change is an opportunity to overcome the global economic crisis by creating pro-poor jobs and sustainable green growth.
The impacts of climate change are already being felt in South Africa, the conference heard, so there needs to be a balance between adaptation and mitigation. Adaptation needs more attention and funding.
The minister of environmental affairs and tourism, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, said that the summit far exceeded expectations. “I am encouraged by the strong resolve to meet the dual challenges of adaptation and mitigation by placing sustainable development and poverty eradication at the forefront. The strong consensus on making the transition to a climate resilient and low carbon economy and society will underpin our future work.”
CHINA BUILDS SOLAR THERMAL PLANT
A report from this week’s climate change conference said that Eskom may decide to build a solar thermal baseload plant later this year. Another developing country, China is about to start building its first solar thermal power station in Beijing this month, China Daily reports. The 1.5MW experimental station is expected to generate about 2.7-million kWh of electricity a year, enough to power at least 30,000 homes. The solar tower-type station, which will comprise 100 mirrors or heliostats which will redirect the suns rays to a receiver at the top of a 100m-high tower, will cost about 100-million yuan (R150-million). China plans to generate at least 150MW of power from solar thermal power stations by 2015, the report says. Full report
A THIRD WIND FARM FOR SA?
South Africa could get it’s third wind farm soon. According to a report in Engineering News, a 50MW wind farm has been proposed for the Western Cape town of St Helena Bay and the environmental impact assessment, which has reportedly been delayed for a year because of investor concerns, may start this month. David Chown of Genesis Eco-Energy, a Cape Town-based company said that once the National Energy Regulator (Nersa) announces its renewable energy feed-in tariffs, which it is expected to do at the end of this month, the company will be able to raise funding for the R850-million project. The 5.2MW Darling wind farm was officially launched last year and Eskom is building a 100MW wind farm in Koekenaap. All are in the Western Cape province. Full report
YES, YOU CAN YOU DRINK THE WATER
A new programme has been launched by the department of water affairs and forestry that will award municipalities with “Blue Drop Status” for having drinking water of excellent quality. If a town has Blue Drop status consumers will be secure in the knowledge that wastewater is managed and discharged in a sustainable, environmentally-acceptable manner, Bua News reports. Minister Lindiwe Hendricks said at the launch of the programme this week that towns would be able to use the prestigious Blue Drop Status to market themselves to both residents and tourists. She said assessments had been completed in various towns and their status would be made known soon.
CALL TO STOP NUCLEAR SHIPS ENTERING SA WATERS
Greenpeace Africa has called on the South African government not to allow two ships carrying plutonium mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel to enter its waters as they make their way from France to Japan. The shipment of about 1.8 tonnes of MOX fuel – enough to make 225 nuclear weapons – will round the Cape of Good Hope this month on two heavily armed ships protected by specially trained British forces, the environmental group says. “MOX shipments are simply not worth the risk, they are a major terror target and pose an enormous threat to the environment of all countries en route,” says Dr Rianne Teule, nuclear campaigner for Greenpeace International. [Greenpeace]
Sky picture by twoblueday licensed under a Creative Commons licence
Solar tower by chausinho licenses under a Creative Commons licence
Tap picture by chopr licensed under a Creative Commons licence
Call for more public participation in SA’s energy policy
December 17, 2008
Posted in Business
The government has failed to respect the right of the South African public to participate meaningfully in the country’s future energy policy, says the Public Service Accountability Monitor (PSAM).
Its committment to a long-term strategy that involves nuclear plants generating up to a quarter of the country’s total energy output in the coming decades has been made without any meaningful public participation, the Rhodes University-based group says in a press release.
The energy policy implemented in South Africa will have a major impact on efforts to eradicate poverty in the country. To do this it needs to maximise job creation and enhance opportunities for the improvement of the quality of life of the poor majority, it says.
“Nuclear power is enormously expensive and there are coherent arguments that it is not cost effective, does not create the kind and number of jobs that our country desperately needs and poses unacceptable environmental risks,” the PSAM states.
There have been some encouraging signs that the government is looking at ways to introduce more renewable energy. For example, Nelly Magubane, deputy director-general of the department of public enterprise, said recently that “renewable energy is definitely on the cards…we are actually looking at ways of making sure that we get even more renewable energy in the system”, notes the PSAM.
Although Eskom recently shelved plans to build a new power station, Nuclear One, because it could not afford it, the PSAM notes that the electricity utility has made it clear that nuclear power remains firmly on its long-term agenda.
Eskom is negotiating a $5-billion dollar (about R50-billion) loan from the World Bank to help fund its expansion and has already secured a $500-million dollar loan from the African Development Bank.
The PSAM is urging both Eskom and the World Bank to conduct its negotiations openly and transparently. “After all, what is being considered is essentially a loan to the people of South Africa, and we have a right to know what the conditions of the loan are, since we will be repaying it,” it says.
The PSAM wants the World Bank and on the government to make any loan to Eskom conditional on guarantees of meaningful public participation in the formulation of South Africa’s future energy policy and to ensure that the terms and conditions of any loan are transparent, allowing both parliament and the public to hold Eskom accountable for its use of the funds.
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
Briefs: Kenya thinks nuclear, crunch hits carbon trade and Chad pipe dream ends
September 16, 2008
Posted in Green News
Power hungry: Kenya is considering building a 1,000MW nuclear power station.
Carbon trade: Lehman Brothers, the US investment bank that has filed for bankruptcy protection, has closed its carbon trading desk, Reuters reports. The bank has stakes is about 10 Clean Development Projects, mostly in China, a source told the news agency, which may have to be sold by liquidators. The impact of the credit crisis will probably be felt by the clean energy sector as banks limit their lending, says Reuters. The European Union reportedly needs about 85-billion Euros a year to reach its 2020 renewable energy targets.
Plate plan: Non-recyclable disposable plates and cutlery are to be taxed in France to encourage consumers to buy more eco-friendly products.
Money hungry: The World Bank has withdrawn from an agreement for an oil pipeline linking landlocked Chad to terminals on the coast of Cameroon because Chad’s government failed to “allocate adequate resources to poverty alleviation”, The Guardian reports. The deal was meant to bring much needed petrodollars to Chad. As part of the agreement Chad’s government had said it would spend 72% of the oil royalties on building schools, hospitals and roads. A significant amount of the money is thought to have been spent on the military. Chad has agreed to repay $140-million.
Govt spends R4m on nuclear makeover
September 3, 2008
Posted in Green News
Reports surfaced in July that the government had engaged the services of a brand consultant, Freedthinkers, to work on the image of nuclear energy in South Africa. It turns out that this eight-month exercise is costing the country R4-million. [Engineering News] Read more
Makeover for nukes
July 10, 2008
Posted in Green News
The government has employed a “brand consultant” to work on the image of nuclear power in South Africa, according to a report on News24. Freedthinkers, the consultants, are looking to “unearth the perceptions, misperceptions, fears and expectations surrounding nuclear power and related issues”, the report says. Apparently the initiative is being led by the department of public enterprises, which is working with the department of minerals and energy and Eskom. Surely there are more pressing issues the government could be spending money on than a branding exercise for the nuclear industry? Read the full report on News24
Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that Japan may be looking at the possibility of building 12 atomic reactors in South Africa as part of a plan to cut greenhouse emission and offer assistance to African countries.
News in brief
March 17, 2008
Posted in Green News
BEACH BUMMER – Four of Durban’s swimming beaches have lost their “blue flag” status because of unacceptable faecal pollution readings, Sapa reports. This comes less than a week before the start of the Easter school holidays. The blue flag is an “eco-label” awarded by independent non-profit organisation Foundation for Environmental Education.
BIG GAME SPENDERS – Dubai World, the investment arm of the government of Dubai, has bought into three South African game reserves for an undisclosed amount – Shamwari (Eastern Cape), Sanbona Wildlife Reserve (in the Western Cape) and Jock Safari Lodge (near the Kruger National Park) – Business Day reports. Dubai World acquired Cape Town’s Victoria and Alfred Water Front in 2006.
ANOTHER BIOFUELLED BOEING - American carrier Continental Airlines, Boeing and GE Aviation have announced plans to conduct a biofuels demonstration flight early next year using a Boeing Next-Generation 737. Last month a Virgin Atlantic Boeing flew from London to Amsterdam on a biofuel mix. The three companies are looking identify sustainable fuel sources that don’t impact food crops, water resources or contribute to deforestation, and which can be produced in sufficient quantities. Read more at EnergyDaily
CLOSING PRICE - Think nuclear power stations are expensive to build? Well decommissioning them doesn’t appear to be cheap either. Britain’s Sellafield nuclear site is expected to cost billions of pounds to decommission. At present, a number of consortia are at bidding for a 20-billion pound (about R320-billion) decommissioning contract, the Observer reports. According to Britian’s Independent, the Sellafield site’s main activity over the past few decades has been reprocessing used reactor fuel, separting out plutonium and uranium from nuclear waste. The Thorp reprocessing plant will reportedly close around 2011 when its contracts run out.
Greenpeace blasts Moore’s SA pro-nuke tour
March 6, 2008
Posted in Green News
Greenpeace is urging South Africans to ignore the “pro-nuclear preaching” of Patrick Moore, a world-renowned evironmentalist, who is on a lecture tour of South African universities this week at the invitation of the Nuclear Industry Association of South Africa.
Moore, who is described one of the co-founders of Greenpeace, will be sharing his views on global warming and the role nuclear energy, renewable energy and energy efficiency can play in producing a cleaner energy supply and ensuring a sustainable energy future.
At a news conference in Sandton on Tuesday he said that climate change had made him a strong supporter of nuclear power. “I find it logically inconsistent for people in the environmental movement who say that climate change threatens the very existence of our civilisation and could drive millions of species into extinction, to then oppose one of the most important technologies that could bring about the resolution of this crisis,” The Times reported him as saying.
At a lecture he gave at Wits University on Monday he said that although he supported wind and solar energy, they would never be able to provide enough baseline power.
Incidentally, Greenpeace denies in a media statement that Moore is one of the environmental acitivist group’s co-founders and says that he uses this “false claim” to “bolster his opinion for industrial hire”.
Since he left the organisation more than 20 years ago, Moore has been a “paid propagandist for a number of polluting industries, including: defending clear-cut logging of forests in British Columbia, downplaying deforestation in Amazonia, supporting controversial mining projects, and promoting genetic engineering”, the Greenpeace release says. “On some occasions he has even been in the Climate Sceptic camp,” it adds.
Greenpeace describes nuclear power as “a deadly distraction from the real energy solutions” to the problems of global warming and energy security.
It adds that South Africa’s power cuts cannot be addressed by nuclear power which, anyway, will not be available until 2016, at the earliest, whereas renewable energy and energy efficiency can deliver quickly and cheaply.
The nuclear industry, Greenpeace says, is “deadly, dangerous, expensive, a nuclear proliferation threat and leaves a legacy of nuclear waste that will threaten the lives and livelihoods for many generations to come”.
Greenpeace’s Energy [R]evolution blueprint shows that renewable energy, combined with greater energy efficiency, can deliver half of the world’s energy needs by 2050, the organisation says.
See also Greenpeace’s short briefing Nuclear Power is not the Answer
update: Nuclear documentary hearing
February 19, 2008
Posted in Green News
The Broadcasting Complaints Commission hearing scheduled for February 20 on the airing of the documentary Uranium Road on M-Net’s Carte Blanche show has been cancelled because a settlement has been reached between the complainants and M-Net.
Documentary upsets SA’s nuclear industry
February 19, 2008
Posted in Green News
The South African nuclear industry has lodged a complaint with the Broadcasting Complaints Commission (BCC) over the screening on M-Net’s Carte Blanche of a documentary about the country’s nuclear industry. Earthlife Africa says that it is concerned that this is an attempt by the nuclear lobby to silence any dissenting voices. The hearing is set for tomorrow (February 20) at the BCC’s offices in Johannesburg and it is open to the public.
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