when the lights go out

As reported in Engineering News last week, Eskom has been talking of a R150 billion, five-year investment plan to increase generating and transmission capacity in South Africa. But now Portia Molefe, the director-general of the department of public enterprises, is hinting at a possible R1 trillion energy spend over 25 years, according to yesterday's Business Report. By my calculation, that's more than R40,000 for every household in the country, and most of it will go towards big projects feeding an expanded national grid, with possibly 30 percent of South Africa's power being nuclear by 2030.

Surely with that much money, alternative approaches could be within the country's grasp? So far, the department of minerals and energy has subsidised only two renewable energy projects to the tune of R3 million.

What intrigues me about the warnings issued by Eskom's CEO Jacob Maroga regarding the tight timelines for getting new power online, is that he is putting the blame on the Environmental Impact Assessment process. Perhaps I'm missing something here, but if the EIA approvals are slow in coming, that could be a hint that Eskom is on the wrong path. If it's proving difficult to secure land for new transmission lines, maybe they should consider local generation combined with demand management strategies. Eskom has barely dipped its corporate toe in that water.

But instead of trying a little creativity, Eskom throws up its hands and says foreigners shouldn't buy land in Lephalale, where some of the transmission lines are planned, because their game farms are blocking the way. Foreigners? Can that be right? Apparently it can - according to the Engineering News report, a panel has been set up "specifically to investigate the appropriate policy response to the increasing tendency for foreigners to buy land in South Africa." Yes, believe it:

The panel's report is currently out for public comment and includes the following recommendations: the compulsory disclosure of nationality, race and gender; a possible temporary moratorium on the sale of State land to foreigners; a possible prohibition on foreign ownership in certain classified areas; the harmonisation of laws affecting land-use planning and zoning; the establishment of an interdepartmental oversight committee to monitor foreign land-ownership trends; and measures to deal with fronting.

So next year when we hit peak power demand in South Africa, and the lights start flickering, get ready for the march of the xenophobic brigade.

small-scale farmers supported with global agreements

For eleven years, American company Burke International fought to hold the trademark rights for the name rooibos tea. In February 2004 the American Botanical Council (ABC) issued an “Expert Opinion” on the subject, concluding that rooibos is a generic and common name for the plant material found in international commerce since at least 1962 and sold in the United States for at least four decades. In 2005, the dispute was settled, much to the relief of South African producers. (If you are interested in the legal side of this story, here are a number of related case studies.)

Though the rooibos case seems to have ended on a positive note, the greed and audacity of Burke International makes me sick. So here's some news from Ethiopia showing that global trade isn't all bad (article reproduced from Spore, February 2007 Edition):

The Ethiopian government and a British company, Vernique Biotech, have signed a deal to market an oleaginous plant which Ethiopian farmers have traditionally dismissed as a weed. The shiny black seeds of the Vernonia galamensis contain vernonia oil, a non-polluting alternative to epoxy which is used in the manufacture of paints and plastics. Epoxy is made from oil, and in common with other petrochemical products, its constantly rising price offers opportunities for natural substitutes.

Vernonia has the advantage of growing in the dry valleys of Ethiopia, where soils are too poor to grow food crops. Prized in traditional medicine for its many properties, this drought resistant plant is part of Ethiopia’s natural heritage. By recognising the Ethiopians’ claim to this plant, the deal signed with the British firm is one of the first to embody the equity principles of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. In 2004, a Dutch company signed a similar agreement with Ethiopia to market teff (Eragrostis tef), a local cereal. Vernique Biotech will pay royalties to the government and will give it a share of the profits over the next 10 years. Cultivation of vernonia began in 2004. One hectare yields 1 to 2 t of vernonia oil. The plantations, maintained by hundreds of farmers, are expected to be gradually extended to cover an area of several hundred hectares.

In the long term, the company plans to market the oil for pharmaceutical purposes.

cultural heritage and transportation

Today is Heritage Day in South Africa. Most countries, whether or not they dedicate a public holiday to it, celebrate cultural heritage in one way or another. It might be poorly defined, subjected to endless arguments, considered differently by groups in society who feel they should be identified as different from others, and even co-opted to political ends. But most people seem to assume that it somehow defines who we are, and is therefore worth preserving. What is not fully recognized in the planning fraternity though, is the range of ways in which transportation and the built environment affect culture in its present incarnations.

Many countries, including South Africa, use environmental impact assessments - or some similar mechanism - to check that planned changes to transportation infrastructure don't adversely affect cultural heritage resources. This is usually considered to mean that built heritage features such as historically significant buildings or other human artifacts should not be compromised.

Transportation corridor design and construction can affect these resources in a number of ways. In the 2003 Draft Cultural Heritage Work Plan for the planned extension of Highway 407 in Ontario, it was noted that "[t]he effects may include displacement through removal or demolition and/or disruption by the introduction of physical, visual, audible or atmospheric elements that are not in keeping with the character of the cultural heritage resources, and/or their setting."

While it is notoriously difficult to quantify some of these impacts, they are at least reasonably tangible. Things start to get a little more interesting when we consider that "[a]ggregations of individual cultural features usually form areas of homogenous character such as a rural area, a village, a streetscape, etc. The attributes for built heritage features are derived from historical associations and/or architectural or engineering qualities." And it's even more challenging to incorporate the role of memory in cultural heritage, something that has recently entered the heritage debate in South Africa.

All of this is no doubt important, but it's missing a crucial element in the consideration of transportation's impact on cultural heritage: the present.

It is true that present lifesyle is partially considered in environmental assessments. Ontario's Environmental Assessment Act defines "environment" to include "...cultural conditions that influence the life of humans or a community." So, for example, if a new road will force relocation of households, or a new dam will wipe out the livelihoods of a community, these are registered as impacts that must be considered.

The cultural conditions of community life should, however, be defined more broadly than is generally done for environmental assessments. At a workshop of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Project on Environmentally Sustainable Transportation, held in Ottawa in 2000, John Adams noted in his paper "The Social Implications of Hypermobility":

It is transport - and communications - that connect everything in society to everything else. The length, strength, quality and complexity of the connecting strands, and the patterns into which they are woven, are the physical manifestation of the social fabric - a metaphor for the myriad ways in which people and institutions relate to each other.

The OECD project looked at two alternative scenarios that countries could aim for in their policies and planning practices: Business as Usual (BAU) and Environmentally Sustainable Transport (EST). As defined by OECD, BAU is simply an extrapolation of past trends, while EST is "transportation that does not endanger public health or ecosystems and that meets needs for access consistent with (a) use of renewable resources that are below their rates of regeneration, and (b) use of non-renewable resources below the rates of development of renewable substitutes." Adams suggested that the BAU scenario would make countries richer (measured by GDP), but poorer by most other social and environmental indicators. "BAU countries will be:

• more polarised (greater disparity between rich and poor);
• more dispersed (more suburban sprawl);
• more anonymous and less convivial (fewer people will know their neighbours);
• less child-friendly (children's freedoms will be further curtailed by parental fears);
• less culturally distinctive (the McCulture will be further advanced);
• more dangerous for those not in cars (more metal in motion);
• fatter and less fit (less exercise built into daily routines);
• more crime ridden (less social cohesion and more fear of crime);
• subject to a more Orwellian style of policing (more CCTV surveillance); and
• less democratic (the majority will have less influence over the decisions that govern their lives)."

In other words, the way we approach transport planning has a significant impact on cultural heritage in the here and now. It's not something removed from present reality. Present reality is already evolving under the hands of planners, engineers, developers and politicians, so the question is not whether society should change the way it is culturally defined, but how.

bring the jungle inside

At home and in the office, the best way to maintain air quality is to use plants to scrub toxins from the air. If you've recently installed carpets or furniture, chances are you can smell the pollutants, but they continue to be off-gased for ages. Products like particle board and plywood, often used to make shelves, desks and the like, give off formaldehyde, benzene and trichloroethylene. If you can't avoid these products, you can at least install a few plants that thrive on the gases.

solar challenge for South Africa

In September next year South Africa will host a FIA approved 4000km+ solar car race. Launched by the Advanced Energy Foundation (AEF), the race will give South Africans a chance to compete against some of the top solar racing teams from around the world, while promoting technical innovation and public awareness. Read more at Greencars.

Darling rocks

Rocking the Daisies returns to the town of Darling in the Western Cape next weekend (28 to 30 September), and the festival organisers are reducing the event's environmental impact in a number of ways. One is to use hemp fabric for official festival clothing. The benefits of hemp, according to the festival website:

Hemp offers so many solutions to the challenges our continent faces on a daily and longer-term basis. Emerging farmers can grow hemp without having to buy the pesticides, chemical fertiliser and herbicides and use much less water than most other conventional crops require. At harvest time they can use the entire plant with zero waste, the fibre being the primary product, the essential fatty acid and protein rich seeds for nutrition/fuel and the byproduct of the stalk for housing. The green leaves are left in the field and ploughed back into the soil, replacing valuable nitrogen and leaving the soil fertile for the next rotational crop to be planted.

They are also collecting used cooking oil from restaurants at the festival, converting it to biodiesel, and using that to power a generator for the restaurants. How cool is that? Other strategies are outlined on the festival website.

natural inspiration

Biomimicry - stealing ideas from nature - has potential to create designs that are highly efficient, with reduced environmental impact. Architects are copying functional systems found in nature to provide cooling, generate energy and even to desalinate water. These can be elegant in their simplicity, such as this example from Zimbabwe:

...there are now several buildings that have ventilation systems based on those found in termite mounds. The Eastgate Centre, a shopping centre and office block in Harare, Zimbabwe, has a mechanical cooling system made up of vents and flues that help hot air out of the structure. “It's the same principle as the chimney effect, but a bit more controlled,” says Professor George Jeronimidis, director of the Centre for Biomimetics at the University of Reading. As hot air rises and flows out through vents at the top of the building, cooler air is drawn in at ground level.

Some of these strategies are not new, but researchers are starting to look harder not only at the systems that heat and cool buildings, but also at the materials used, in an effort to simplify systems, increase efficiency and reduce the embodied energy and carbon in buildings.

Architect Michael Pawlyn (whose firm worked on the Eden Project) believes that part of the challenge is to reconnect people with resources. In the process of borrowing from nature to reduce environmental impact, he hopes that people will learn to treat nature with greater respect.

selling more than sea shells by the sea shore

The Carbon Trust last year predicted that marine energy could provide 20 per cent of the UK’s electricity needs, and with the interest being shown in developing new sources of renewable energy, this just might become a reality. The Scottish coast is a site of several pilot projects to harvest wave energy and tidal energy; there may soon be offshore wind farms; and a new project to capture wave energy using floating offshore structures has been announced.

Embley Energy Ltd plans to use floating concrete wave-energy converters that it hopes will last 40 years, making them cost-competitive with both fossil fuels and other renewable energy sources.

The Sperboy is based on the 'oscillating water column' principle. As the buoy moves up and down on the waves, air is displaced from a chamber within the buoy which then drives turbine-generators situated on top.  Maintenance requirements are kept to a minimum due to a limited number of moving parts which are located above the sea’s surface making them more easily accessible.

a tall story

When "sustainable building design" was the only kind there was: 14-storey mud brick skyscrapers densely packed into the city of Shibam, Yemen. Still standing after two millennia.

managed forestry

Paging through a back issue of Earth Island Journal (Winter 2007), I came across an interesting project in the State of Queretaro, Mexico. The Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve of a million acres includes human settlements and agricultural activity within its boundaries. Poverty and slash-and-burn agriculture go hand in hand here, and Bosque Sustenable - a civil society organisation specialising in sustainable forestry - wanted to use Kyoto's Clean Development Mechanism to reforest marginal and exhausted agricultural land and address poverty among the reserve's 100,000 inhabitants.

What they found was several barriers to entering the CDM market:

They included the lack of capital for developing projects, the lack of forest management skills among local landholders, and the high cost of emission reductions certification, which resulted in money going into the hands of foreign consultants rather than to local people.

So they turned to the voluntary carbon market with the program of Carbon Sequestration for Sustainable Forestry aimed at organisations, businesses and individuals that would voluntarily contribute to the fight against global warming, the reduction of poverty and conservation of biodiversity.

The debate about using forestry for carbon offsets is in full swing (here and here), but by addressing a number of challenges intelligently, as in this project, a targetted approach with very clear goals seems to be a worthwhile effort. By using managed forestry to increase the value of land, they are preserving old-growth forests within the reserve that would otherwise be burnt, releasing their carbon store. The new forests themselves are a form of monoculture, but they help maintain biodiversity elsewhere. Small-scale landholder-managed plantations provide jobs, and when the trees reach maturity they are harvested for uses that do not release carbon to the atmosphere.

This approach also addresses the challenges posed by a diverse pattern of land ownership. Participants include private and communal landowners, as well as landholders with a record of possession from the local government. As a commitment to investors, the participants sign contracts committing to manage their plantations for carbon sequestration for 30 years. Community organisers and forestry experts organise the landowners into associations and provide them with training in everything from silvicultural techniques to business management.

The first sale of carbon credits under this project was to the UN Foundation, which used the methodology of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Initiative and tools provided by the World Resources Institute to calculate its carbon emissions from electricity consumption, and air travel, at its Washington, DC and New York Offices.