wave energy potential for South Africa

I wasn't aware - until now - that a research project was set up in 1980 to research the potential of harnessing wave energy on South Africa's coast. It went quiet for a while, but the Stellenbosch Wave Energy Converter Project has since been resurrected. According to Professor Deon Retief, the marine engineer who started the project, there are a number of possible sources of marine energy, including salinity gradients, temperature gradients, tides, bio-conversion and ocean currents off the South African coast.

traffic visualisation

Traffic engineers have, over the years, come up with a variety of ways to visually present traffic data in a way that makes sense to the observer and conveys a particular message. Some mapping systems show drivers where traffic is slow in real time so that they can avoid delays; others are static representations to help planners design the network; still others are 3D animations that highlight conflicts and operational problems. For each purpose, a different tool.

Some data is immensely difficult to present in a meaningful way, and the Visualizar Workshop in Madrid last November attempted some fascinating new ways to present data. One of the workshop projects was Cascade on Wheels:

We made two different visualizations of the same data set. We intended not just to visualize the data in a readable way, but also to express its meaning, with the use of metaphors. In the Walls Map piece, car counts are represented by 3D vertical columns emerging from the streets map, like walls. The Traffic Mixer piece, where noise is the metaphor, is an hybrid of a visualization and a sound toy. The first piece focuses more on showing the data in a readable and functional way, while the latter focuses more on expressing the meaning of the data and immersing the user into these numbers. Both pieces try to complete each other.

An interview on WorldChanging gives an idea of what the project's creators were trying to achieve.

I am fascinated by innovative ways to present traffic data because most visualisation tools haven't progressed enough to respond to new ways of thinking about transportation and how to provide a more balanced mobility system. Cascade on Wheels doesn't answer that challenge, but it does attempt to show some of the impacts of vehicular traffic that aren't captured using traditional models. It's this kind of thinking that is needed to improve the sustainability performance of cities.

ectopias of the world

We all like lists, right? Here is a compilation of places vying for the title of "greenest community" - some built, some still on the drawing board. I guess a bit of rivalry is good for innovation. Courtesy of Wired:

• Costa Rica: plans to become the first carbon neutral country by 2021.
• Dockside Green in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada: will promote bicycle use and carsharing, and build structures out of trees that were submerged by reservoirs.
• Dongtan, Chongming Island, China: to be powered from renewable sources, fuel-cell-powered transport and organic farming.
• Green Mountain, Libya: luxury hotels to be powered by wind turbines and solar farms.
• Guangtang Chuangye Park, Liuzhou, China: biogas from human waste to generate electricity, and filtered rainwater for bathing.
• Masdar, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates: wind turbines, photovoltaics, grey water recycling, transport by light rail and walking only.
• Northstowe, Cambridge, England: brownfield development on an old airfield, with water recycling, photovoltaics, wind power and buildings insulated with recycled paper.
• Norway: plans to cut emissions by 30% by 2020, and become carbon neutral by 2050.
• Treasure Island, San Francisco, USA: brownfield development on a former naval base, to grow food and use congestion charging to discourage car use.
• Vauban, Freiburg, Germany: passive houses designed to minimise energy consumption, carshare service, and 40% of residents pledge to live car-free.
• Växjö, Sweden: already one of the world's greenest cities, with half its power from renewable sources, and one of the lowest per-capita carbon output rates in Europe, aiming to be fossil-fuel free by 2050.

There are a few others missing from the Wired list. Iceland and New Zealand have also pledged to achieve carbon neutrality as countries. They have joined the UN's Carbon Neutral Network, announced by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) at its special session in Monaco last week. Costa Rica and Norway are also part of CN Net, as well as Sweden's Växjö and three other cities: Vancouver in Canada, Arendal in Norway, and Rizhao in the northern China province of Shandong. There are five corporate members, one being South Africa's Nedbank.

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP executive director, says of CN Net:

This new initiative supports the formal negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Here governments need to navigate the Bali Road Map to a successful conclusion in Copenhagen in 2009.

The CN Net can assist in building confidence through demonstrable action at the national and local level on the art of the possible.

measuring green performance can be tricky

Sustainability is about performance, not about picking the "correct" technology. No individual strategy is right for every occasion - it's a question of what moves the world forwards instead of backwards. Responding to a Popular Science ranking of America's 50 greenest cities, Alex Steffen of WorldChanging raises the interesting challenge of how to define "forwards" and "backwards", and makes a few initial suggestions:

• Instead of measuring the amount of electricity coming from renewable sources, compare energy use with GDP: who's getting most prosperous using the least energy?
• Instead of counting how many people use public transportation, measure vehicle miles traveled per capita and car ownership rates: we should be reducing the need to travel, and distance travelled.
• Instead of assessing the best buildings in a city by counting the number with green accreditation, assess building codes and what the average building is like.
• Instead of assessing how comprehensive recycling systems are and how much material they take in, consider the percentage of solid waste that still goes to landfills: we want to reduce total waste, not just increase recycling.

Unfortunately for the politicians, it's often the more mundane actions and low-profile strategies that make the biggest impact. They are also harder to measure, but I believe we'll have to try.

role of cement in carbon emissions

The cement industry is responsible for 5% of all carbon dioxide released globally as a result of human activities, according to the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. In each country, the volume of emissions depends on the sources of electricity, since a large portion of emissions is related to the power used in cement manufacture. In South Africa, where most electricity comes from coal-fired plants, each ton of cement produced releases 750kg of carbon dioxide. Last year, the country consumed 14.1 million tons of cement, 89% of which was produced locally.

In response to the South African government's support of emissions targets for developing countries, the local cement industry, represented by ACMP, has warned that carbon emissions caps would lead to higher volumes of imports. The assumption is that growth in cement use (forecast to be 24 million tons a year by 2014) is the only way to feed economic growth.

There are two flaws to this argument.

First, caps would not be imposed without the option to trade carbon credits, so if the industry does grow, cement will simply become more expensive as a result of internalising the cost of carbon emissions. And since the UN negotiations that are expected to lead to a renogotiated climate change treaty by next year will include limits and trading for many more countries than at present, cement prices will increase everywhere and imports won't necessarily be cheaper than the local product.

Second, there are perfectly viable alternatives to cement in the construction industry. Cement quantities in concrete can be reduced by substituting with flyash, for instance. (And flyash is a readily available by-product of coal-fired electricity production.) The building industry could also put much more effort into designing buildings to use less concrete.

There needs to be greater awareness of the options and of the carbon implications of design decisions, then we can begin to decouple economic growth from emissions growth.

Once the Green Building Council of South Africa starts using a local version of Green Star - the Australian system for rating the sustainability performance of buildings - choices will be much smarter in terms of energy efficiency overall. The next step will be to establish building codes that address carbon intensity explicitly, as is already happening in the UK.

For more information on the cap-and-trade concept, and variations on the theme, have a look at this recent WorldChanging article.

BC takes the lead with carbon tax

From July this year, the Canadian province of British Columbia will charge a tax on fossil fuels, gradually increasing the rate each year as an incentive for reducing carbon emissions. The government's strategy for reducing the impact on the economy is to reduce other taxes:

Corporate and personal income tax rates will drop to help make the tax revenue neutral, and lower-income British Columbians will receive an annual climate action credit of $100 per adult and $30 per child.

British Columbia will be the first jurisdiction in North America to introduce a consumer-based carbon tax.

Trevor Manuel's carbon account

South Africa took its first step towards monetizing carbon emissions as Finance Minister Trevor Manuel used his budget speech to announce a precedent-setting levy on the sale of electricity generated from non-renewable resources. This move will begin the process of financially differentiating energy from different sources. The initial levy is small, at 2c per kWh (while a typical household pays around 40c per kWh), but opens the door to improving competitiveness of clean energy.

Chamsa Western Cape, the umbrella body of organised business, predictably claimed the levy would be bad for business and hit poor people hardest. In a country with unrealistically low electricity tariffs - even with the increase that has also been announced - the carbon levy is not the problem - the real concern is what I wrote about yesterday: individuals being discouraged from generating their own power from renewable sources.

[Sources: Cape Times and Cape Argus, 21 February 2008]

And the Minister even worked out the carbon impact of his budget efforts:

It estimated that since the beginning of 2008, to the tabling of the Budget, the National Treasury's work caused R38 000 kg of carbon dioxide emission through aeroplane flights and motor vehicle transport.

There were also 37 t of paper used - the equivalent of sacrificing 726 trees. The Budget documents were however printed on ‘triple green' paper, which is chlorine free, biodegradeable, and met the standards of sustainable forestation.

Eskom and the Africa factor

Why does South Africa allow itself to fall behind so quickly in a race that has hardly begun? For a country that has been at the forefront of innovations as diverse as automatic swimming pool cleaners, human heart transplants and oil-from-coal technology, there has been remarkable inertia in adoption of regulations, standards and incentives to encourage improved sustainability performance.

South Africa is still developing new technologies, including a breakthrough PV solar panel, but they tend to fall into the hands of countries that are more supportive of efforts to convert innovations into practical solutions. Many of South Africa's technological developments in the past were driven by the necessity of overcoming economic isolation, and now there is strong incentive for producing renewable energy and improving efficiencies of energy use. But we haven't grasped the opportunity. Even if climate change weren't a driving force, there just isn't enough electricity to keep the economy humming, and there is no prospect of a major new power station coming online before 2011, so we should be innovating like crazy.

Eskom's current strategy relies on medium-term needs being met by returning mothballed stations back to service, building a couple of expensive gas turbines and hoping that some co-generation projects pop up from next year. The rest is up to you and me to reduce consumption - which we should be doing, but little is being done to make it easy for us.

You would think that this would be the time to take the road less travelled, to take the lead. The race for sustainability has barely begun, but by the time South Africa gets serious about joining, the road will already be crowded. To illustrate how quickly this is happening, just look north to the UK, where government is so serious about its zero carbon homes agenda that the public debates are not about if it should happen, but about how quickly it can be achieved. Look no further than the Merton Rule to see the subtleties of the debate, which focus on whether on-site renewable energy should be required on all new developments, or only on some new developments.

Back in the land of perpetual sunshine, on-site power generation isn't even a consideration for residential or commercial buildings. The Department of Minerals and Energy's National Response to South Africa's Electricity Shortage, issued in January 2008, talks about a short-term power conservation programme that will:

• apply electricity quotas for households based on 10% reduction from current consumption,
• eliminate incandescent light bulbs from all 10 million electrified households in the country (a saving of 750 MW by 2015),
• install 1 million solar water heaters over the next three years with a subsidy of 20 to 30% (a saving of 650 MW if they can find that many water heaters), and
• update housing codes to require use of load management switches to ensure that a household's electric water heater and electric stove are not on at the same time, and improving insulation.

Nothing suggesting micro-generation of power in that list, or indeed anywhere in the national response document. Solar water heaters are of course driven by renewable energy, but that's a mere 1.5% of Eskom's total generating capacity, and the utility needs to reduce demand by about 7% immediately in order to restore a healthy reserve margin of 15% between supply and demand. Three years from now, when those 1 million solar heaters have been installed, demand will have grown by another 4,000 MW (3.6% p.a. by Eskom's account), dwarfing the water heater savings.

Eskom's public strategy is about putting the onus on consumers to reduce demand or switch to fuels such as liquid petroleum gas as an alternative to electricity (which does nothing to improve sustainability) but does not put the more powerful tool of micro-generation in the hands of the country's people. Even at a larger scale, only one wind farm is planned (100 MW), and the only mention of electricity from solar power applies to traffic lights (and as I've said before, putting PV panels atop every signalised intersection is a flawed strategy).

The problem with Eskom's strategy - and the Department of Minerals and Energy is party to this - is that it simultaneously asks consumers to do their bit, and limits what they can do. Changing lightbulbs and installing energy-efficient appliances and running remote-control smart meters to limit consumption can only go so far. Lifestyles in South Africa and around the world do need to change, but Eskom seems unwilling to take the step that would ensure that change is positive and long-lasting.

Giving individuals the ability and encouragement to choose from more options, including micro-generation, could achieve a far wider range of benefits than simply easing the short-term power shortage. It could leverage the strength of community to make choices, it could provide employment in a wider range of energy technologies, and it could encourage innovative partnerships of all types and sizes. And with realistic energy prices, we could gradually increase the proportion of power generated from renewable sources through the choices of individuals.

Yesterday Eskom placed advertisements in newspapers, asking for proposals for projects to generate electricity from any source, renewable or otherwise. But when I read the fine print, my heart sank: only projects generating more than 5 megawatts are eligible. In Eskom's world, 5 MW is small; but no urban homeowner can generate that much electricity. A small wind turbine or rooftop solar panels might typically generate 1 or 2 kilowatts.

If 2 million houses had 2 kW solar or wind systems installed, that would be equivalent to a full-size coal power station. Instead of building Medupi coal station in Limpopo for R78 billion, which will only start generating in 2011 and reach full capacity four years later, Eskom could pay the entire costs of installing 2 million household systems at R39,000 each. Of course, this is an over-simplification. In reality, solar and wind systems don't generate power all the time, and there may not even be 2 million houses that are suitable sites for these systems - but it is also true that Eskom would not pay the full installation costs. If they paid a 50% subsidy they could spend the other R39 billion on an initiative of their own that could address the shortfall from the household systems.

I really don't know if the Eskom management team genuinely doesn't believe in micro-generation, is determined to maintain its control over the power system, or is simply afraid of the unknown. There is no doubt that under the scenario I have just described, the energy distribution system would be transformed into a completely new beast, and there would be serious challenges to address. But is it impossible? I doubt it. Balancing supply and demand is one of the key challenges for an electricity utility, and a system with millions of producers sounds like a nightmare. But technical solutions have been proposed for just such a scenario, and it will start happening soon in other countries. Again, we are simply behind the pack instead of leading.

So why isn't South Africa showing innovative leadership? The Africa factor.

I am not an afro-pessimist. There are plenty of people who cite corruption and greed as the seeds of post-colonial failure on this continent, and these are certainly challenges, but a serious constraint that is rarely discussed is lack of confidence. The Africa factor is the continent's failure to recognise its own worth. Perhaps its people have been cowed by colonialism and missionaries and World Bank aid, but it's time to stand tall. Africa has never been a dominant economic force on the world stage (unlike China, which is now entering its second era of dominance), but the continent has much to offer.

Africa's value lies not just in the wealth of minerals and other commodities, but more significantly in the less visible things, like its ability to innovate under stress; its sense of community; and its historic connectedness with the land, which engenders a sense of responsible stewardship. Africa knows about pre-industrial sustainability, and it's still in evidence. We just need to stop and look. And believe that the continent can overcome obstacles, to emerge as a bearer of values that can restore hope in the future.

[Update later the same day:]

By coincidence, an email arrived in my inbox today about a seminar on African Leadership being organised by the Stellenbosch University Business School for 4-5 March in Bryanston. The marketing blurb is worth repeating:

The thrust of [recent seminars, conferences and workshops on African leadership] is to understand and/or discover whether there is something germane to the African condition that is capable of producing a brand or model of leadership that is different, better or more pleasant than the other brands and models that are well known. The reasons for this quest are:

(a) An acknowledgement that the western mode of leadership has not delivered to the needs of humankind, and thus maybe Africa as the cradle of humankind can provide some insights on how to steward humanity forward in the context of globalisation and material power;

(b) The fact that Africa has survived so many disasters and calamities, natural and man-made, suggests that Africa has something inherent within it that the world can learn from, chief among these being the capacity of African leaders to forgive and forget, which is part of the Ubuntu spirit of individual wellness that is dependent upon the well-being of the collective;

(c) Something happened in South Africa after 1990 that has astonished the international community in terms of a capacity to create a society that is diverse, yet not in conflict: thus suggesting that there is something in the (South) African make-up that we ought to tap into for all humanity to emulate. At the same time, it is the South Africans themselves who do not appreciate what they offered to the world, and therefore must have.

[Update on 25 February 2008:]

On the topic of Africa's self-confidence, one of the key problems is that Africa has been branded, in the marketing sense. People on other continents have a very clear, if misleading, image of what Africa is, and attempts to "help" the downtrodden just add to that picture. If the rest of the world sees Africa as a victim requiring aid, Africa will surely see itself in that same light. Carina Ray writes in this month's edition of New African [article not available online] about the dangers of 'brand aid' and the need to galvanise awareness of challenges and raise funds "without stigmatising Africa as a dependent and disease-ridden continent".

How might this be done? Start simple: render Africa visible, and highlight the strong sense of selflessness and self-responsibility that exists amongst Africans. Instead of solely featuring Hollywood celebrities in the next (RED) advertising campaign, also include the heroes and heroines of Africa who work tirelessly and often at great cost to themselves to improve conditions in every corner of the continent. People like Awatif Ahmen Isshag and Patrick Chamusso.

Isshag, now in her mid-20s, has published her own newspaper in the town of El Fasher in Darfur since the age of 14. For the last four years, her critical reportage has been the only independent local coverage of the violence in Darfur. Chamusso, after being released from prison for his involvement in the anti-apartheid struggle, built a home in South Africa for Aids orphans, which today houses over 80 children. Now that's inspi(RED)!

I started this post writing about technological development and energy. In those areas, too, Africa needs to become visible. There are stories about how Brazil has led the world in developing biofuels, how Cuba harnessed the power of community to overcome its own oil crisis, and how Curitiba and other South American cities have transformed their public transportation systems into models that other countries seek to emulate. Where are the stories of what Africa has done?

adapting to a low-carbon world

A new report from the Management Consultancies Association (MCA) in the UK, A Growing Concern: How should business adapt to a low-carbon world? points out that while environmnental concerns have become more prominent, there is still a long way for many businesses to go in reducing their carbon emissions. The full report is available online.

And stepping up to the plate is a new partnership between Barratt, a well-known homebuilder in the UK, and E.ON, one of the UK's leading integrated power and gas companies. E.ON is also a leading green generators in the UK, with 21 wind farms located from Cornwall to Northern Ireland and one of the largest dedicated biomass power stations. Combined, their renewable portfolio generates enough green energy to power the homes in a city the size of Manchester.

According to the publicity blurb, they aim to deliver low cost and reliable solutions to meet the UK Government’s zero carbon homes agenda. One of the initial sites is the 200-unit Hanham Hall development near Bristol, to be the first zero carbon community to be built in the UK. It is the first of English Partnerships’ Carbon Challenge sites and will utilise a biomass CHP plant coupled with some of the most environmentally friendly homes ever to be built in the UK. Families living in the units will be able to cut their entire carbon footprint by an average of 60 per cent.

showcase of young South African architects

The Iziko SA National Gallery is hosting the Daimler Chrysler SA Architecture Award Exhibition until 30 March. From Andrew Horn's return to thatching, to Heinrich Wolff's urban eco-design in Du Noon, this should be an interesting show. From the Saturday Argus [requires subscription]:

An admirable humanitarian approach is exemplified by Zimbabwe-born and Johannesburg-based Heather Dodd, who pinpoints the urgency facing the South African government to embrace the fact that forming communities depends on housing. The negative impact of a lack of sensitive fore-thought keeps a legacy of neglect and cruelty alive on our doorsteps in the Cape Flats and horrifically engineered sub-economic housing remains the breeding ground of gangsterism and depravity.

Pointing out that she is "trying to make neighbourhoods", Dodd mentions a "spatial fabric" and social structure that is influenced by and indeed shapes the experience of the individuals who live in the structures she designs.

Exactly. If we don't provide the environment needed to get the social structures right, as part of building cities, we can forget about sustainability.