strategies to reduce transport emissions

There are a number of logistics strategies that could be employed, particularly with freight, to reduce transport's carbon footprint. Researchers working on Gift - the geographic intermodal freight transport model - are collecting data to allow delivery planning that can identify the tradeoffs between routes that minimize carbon footprint or particulate emissions or time costs. For example, with enough data, routes could be planned to minimize the number of left turns (when driving on the right-hand side of the road). As a multimodal model, this approach could be used globally to decide not only routing, but also which modes of transport would provide the best tradeoffs.

SA has some way to go on water conservation

At a two-day National Water Conservation and Demand Management indaba in Midrand last week, international water expert Asit Biswan said despite recent reports that South Africa was losing billions of litres of water annually due to leaks and burst pipes, the country was rated among the top ten in the world on water conservation. Two countries that are doing well are Singapore and Cambodia, and South Africa was encouraged to look to them for ideas.

Hermanus Municipality in the Western Cape is one of South Africa's innovation leaders in water conservation, first addressing residential demand management and then using the country's Working for Water programme to clear alien vegetation that used a lot of groundwater. Despite considerable progress, there have been claims in the past that poor communities are adversely affected by the Hermanus initiative. This raises the important question of how demand management and cost recovery efforts can be applied equitably in a country where poverty is widespread.

SA landfill project using CDM

With assistance from the sale of carbon credits under the Clean Development Mechanism, South Africa's biggest landfill site (handling 5,000 tons of waste a day) will soon produce electricity from methane. Following completion of pilot projects, it is estimated that the new project at Bisasar Road in eThekwini will generate 8 megawatts.

With a projected reduction in GHG of nearly 4 tons of CO2 equivalent, this is big - but South Africa needs to be more aggressive in finding CDM projects to help lower its position as the world's seventh-highest emitter per capita of CO2 equivalent.

food security in South Africa

In an article in this morning's Cape Times, Jeremy Wakeford of UCT's School of Economics points out some of the shortcomings of South Africa's biofuels strategy:

• threats to food security are not only based on diverting agricultural land from other uses to maize production, but also on the fact that maize prices will go up as oil prices go up (oil being an input to maize production) and as demand grows for maize exports
• the energy contained in ethanol from maize is only slightly higher than the energy required to produce the ethanol, so there is no net benefit
• as the cost of producing ethanol goes up, the subsidies for production will need to be maintained (Ethanol Africa has already asked for signficant subsidies from government)
• the benefit of reduced emissions is marginal, given that only a small proportion of fuels will contain ethanol

A quote from Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute:

competition for grain between the world's 800 million motorists who want to maintain their mobility and its two billion poorest people who are simply trying to stay alive is emerging as an epic issue.

Agriculture may face declining production anyway because of climate change, so Wakeford suggests that the biofuels strategy needs to be tied to an agricultural strategy that ensures a sustainable approach. He also suggests that biodiesel is a better bet than ethanol, as it can be produced from a wider variety of feedstocks, including waste vegetable oil, non-food crops requiring less water and fossil fuel inputs, and algae. Biodiesel also serves industries other than transport, and thus has wider applications.

Wakeford's full proposal to the biofuels committee investigating a strategy for South Africa.

Update on 5 April 2007: researchers at the University of Rochester are looking at ways to improve the production of ethanol from cellulose waste materials rather than the crop itself.

Update on 8 April 2007: Confirming the notes above, The Economist reports that while ethanol from maize is indeed a zero sum energy game, other sources are somewhat better. Ethanol from sugar cane (as used in Brazil) produces more energy, and cellulosic ethanol (from wood, grasses, shrubs and agricultural wastes) could be even more energy-efficient. Cellulosic ethanol also has greater potential for production without impinging on food production -- but does need more work to bring down production costs.

go get 'em

South Africa's environmental police unit, known as the "Green Scorpions", have embarked on a national drive to crack down on contraventions of environmental laws. With nearly 900 Environmental Management Inspectors appointed or in training countrywide, they will be looking at everything from illegal fishing to waste disposal, and will also increase public awareness of environmental preservation.

And in an effort to update the Atmospheric Pollution Prevention Act (APPA) of 1965, the Cabinet recently approved an Air Quality Bill for public comment. The bill deals with control of emissions including greenhouse gases and ozone reducing substances.

SA's earthquake zones could make this interesting

Eskom's annual report says its ten coal-fired power stations released 203.7 million tons of CO2 in the year to March 31, 2006. Sir Nicholas Stern has advised the South African government that underground CO2 storage is an appropriate medium term mitigation strategy.

hmmm...

What can happen with subsidies in US ethanol production.

UK raises the bar on emissions targets

The UK government yesterday issued a draft climate change bill setting out five-year targets to reduce CO2 emissions by 60% by 2050.

better use of biomass

Scientists at Purdue University (Indiana) have a theory to improve the efficiency of converting biomass to fuel. Conventional ways of creating biofuel lose two thirds of the material as CO2 and CO, and the proposed system uses hydrogen to reduce the waste - and to reduce the amount of land needed to produce biofuel. The trick is to make cheap hydrogen from solar or other non-emitting energy sources.

bad news is good news

A discussion I had recently with someone from the Free Market Foundation of Southern Africa gave me pause. While I am firmly in the camp of those who believe that climate change is happening and that we need to do something about it, I was reminded of the need for careful consideration.

There is a lot of emotion clouding the debate, and like it or not a lot of people (including me) are predisposed to believe certain viewpoints. If we are really trying to be carbonsmart, we do need to be careful about accepting anything and everything that sounds "sustainable". Bad news is good news for the media, so even if scientific studies are covering all angles, they don't get equal coverage.

While money has started pouring into studies and initiatives related to climate change causes and mitigation, there are people out there who say that this groundswell of activity is drowning out the voices of caution. Despite some possibly legitimate concerns that have been expressed about things like the scientific peer review process adopted by the IPCC, I am not yet convinced that all the scientific studies that seem to be emerging on an almost weekly basis, reinforcing the view that climate change is happening, are based on hysterical scaremongering.

Nevertheless, I have seen plenty of careless statements made by people who agree that we need to do something about climate change. I think, for the sake of the debate and our future, we need to be as level-headed as we can be. Both sides of the climate change debate are guilty of getting excitable, and this does not help anyone.