SA's own electric car

Other South African bloggers have already picked this up here and here and here; but what the heck, when the South African Innovation Fund supports the development of a homegrown electric vehicle that could even make it to commercial production, I might as well join the hoopla. The Cape Times picked this up today because the "Joule", designed in SA by Optimal Energy in association with SA-born designer Keith Helfet, will be shown this week at the Paris Motor Show.

It's always great to see local initiative, but many of the factors that killed the electric car decades ago are still in play, so I wonder how far this will get. One can still hope. And there's a fascinating article in the latest edition of Wired magazine about an American who has suggested a new model for getting electric cars on the road. And he's starting to get noticed. I don't see the article on the website today, but it's in stores now.

Power storage is the biggest technical issue preventing rapid adoption of electric vehicles - primarily the weight of batteries, and the recharge time - and that's what this proposal addresses. The gist of it is that companies could be set up to sell electricity along with the cars. Buy yourself a contract that allows you to recharge your vehicle from a grid of power points, or simply by swapping batteries. The batteries are owned by the power supplier, making a battery swap an easy way to eliminate recharge time if you need to extend your travel range over one day, thereby eliminating the need for a costly backup internal combustion engine. And if you are not travelling far, you can keep fewer batteries on board to reduce weight. The car itself could even be free with a five-year contract for people who travel a lot, while others might buy the car and get electricity on a pay-as-you-go arrangement. Sound familiar? Yep, it's the cellphone contract model.

ground zero for the climate change battle

It's been widely reported that right about now - certainly this decade - cities are overtaking rural areas as home to more than half the world's population. Statistics like this tend to reinforce the emphasis on cities as the source of most environmental problems, making them the focus of research and planning. Most researchers and planners, after all, live in cities.

It's worth remembering that there's still the other half out there. A paper issued last week by the International Institute for Environment and Development claims that cities are often unfairly blamed for producing 75 to 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. If you look at where products and services are consumed, rather than where they are produced, cities are only responsible for 40% of emissions, according to the paper - and the consumer should rightly take responsibility. This is not to demonise people in rural areas; the point is that there are a lot of efficiencies and potential improvements in efficiencies that can be made in cities, but not so much in rural areas. Compact cities, for example, can make better use of resources, can have greater synergies between different land uses, and can have people driving less.

In general, wealthy people outside cities are responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than those in cities as they have larger homes that need to be heated or cooled, more automobiles per household and greater automobile use.

It's not clear, from the summary of the paper, whether the global allocation of emissions to urban and rural areas holds true in developing countries, where there is a particular balance between rich and poor in urban and rural areas that differs from the mix found developed countries. The use of energy by poor people could swing emissions either way: rural poverty often results in less efficient use of energy, such as burning wood for cooking - and likewise, the smog hanging over urban slums might produce beautiful sunsets, but it sure doesn't help the environment.

The paper's author, David Satterthwaite, blames the rich for producing the bulk of emissions, and sees the easiest solutions in urban areas. Both conclusions might be true, but a sustainable solution absolutely must address poverty, wherever it exists, and address it in a way that does not replicate a middle class that consumes resources with abandon. I don't see the point in keeping the battle within city boundaries. Spatial planning, and design of the built form, need to be attuned to environmental preservation on farms, in towns and in the physical and functional relationships between settlements of all sizes.

In a separate editorial in the October 2008 edition of the journal Environment and Urbanisation, Satterthwaite acknowledges the importance of addressing poverty, but keeps the focus on urbanisation and seems not to recognise urban-rural relationships. He notes that efforts by poor communities to gain control over their economic situation can be more easily repressed, and their energy diffused, by municipalities that choose not to (or cannot) address urban inequalities. "In addition, physical proximity is no advantage for urban poor groups when city authorities view them or their settlements as constraints on the city’s development and capacity to attract new investment." Which leads me to think that some strategies to address human settlement challenges could in fact be more effective in rural areas or small towns. And where social and housing needs can be addressed with conscious planning, there must be a parallel opportunity to deal with resource consumption and GHG emissions.

Interestingly for South Africans, the same edition of the journal also includes a paper by Debra Roberts on how Durban has institutionalised a climate change strategy.

Durban is unusual among cities worldwide in having a municipal government that has developed a locally rooted climate change adaptation strategy. The paper highlights the need for climate change issues to be rooted in local realities that centre on avoiding or limiting impacts from, for instance, heat waves, heavy rainfall and storm surges, and sea-level rise, and also the ecological changes and water supply constraints brought about by climate change. The paper also notes how little attention international agencies have paid to adaptation, as the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (mitigation) has been prioritized. This paper also stresses the importance of building local knowledge and capacity about climate change risks and adaptive responses. Without this, decision makers will continue seeing environmental issues as constraints on development rather than as essential underpinnings of and contributors to development.

solar cars on show

If you are in Cape Town, you can see the solar-powered cars that are racing in the South African Solar Challenge. They will be at the MTN Sciencentre at Canal Walk on Wednesday 1st October. From the Sciencentre newsletter:

The South African Solar Challenge 2008 is an epic two-week race in solar-powered cars through the length and breadth of South Africa. Teams have had to build their own cars, design their own engineering systems and are now ready to race those same machines through the most demanding terrain that solar cars have ever known. Don't miss the opportunity to have a closer look at the solar cars and speak to the team members during their stop in Cape Town. Cars will be parked at the Vida court inside Canal Walk for the day on Wednesday 1 October

outmoding the commode

What the modern fridge does for household electricity consumption, the modern toilet does for water. Actually, the toilet - in its most common form - is not modern at all, and it's time for a makeover. But toilets that use little or no water face the same problem I mentioned yesterday in relation to the energy-efficient refrigerator: poor public image. I am not talking about the low-flow models that are now fairly common in some countries. Five- or six-litre flush toilets are a bit like the hybrid car: better than gas-guzzling 4x4 vehicles, but not something that will really wean us off liquid fuels.

I am talking about a litre or less per flush. We need a revolution in the water closet, and Dwell magazine presents a few models that might do the trick. But they are a long way from price levels that will encourage widespread adoption, and some of them still look like they belong in a caravan, not a house. Design, design, design.

old fridge design brought back to life

A few years ago, when I witnessed the effects of Eskom's budget-sapping rollout of the national electricity grid to rural Transkei, I wondered how people who rely on a largely subsistence economy could possibly afford to buy, operate and maintain the electrical appliances that they could now run on 220 volts of coal-generated power. Most rural families probably have one or more family members working in cities, sending money back home, which helps pay the bills; but is that really a sustainable approach to community development?

I have written before about alternative financing models for supplying renewable energy to make rural life more convenient, and here is another technology that could help significantly: a fridge design that was invented by Albert Einstein in 1930. The original design was abandoned when freon and cheap power made it possible to sell fridges that operated with more efficient compressors. But the compressor is what makes it difficult to run a modern fridge using solar power, so the Einstein fridge is being dusted off and improved so that its zero-moving-parts design can be powered with solar panels. In addition to reducing reliance on dirty power, this approach also reduces maintenance needs, so it's perfect for rural communities.

Of course there are more primitive systems, like evaporative fridges, but let's face reality: a huge challenge in stemming the tide of human desire for electrically-powered appliances in the developing world is in coming up with designs that don't make people feel like they are being handed second-rate goods. This sounds like one that could work.

crowdsourcing energy solutions

If we leave everything to the experts, we might never make progress. A new alternate reality game called World Without Oil has been developed to stimulate ideas on an oil-free future by engaging online gamers.

The premise of World Without Oil was simple and provocative: What if an oil crisis started on April 30, 2007 - what would happen? How would the lives of ordinary people change? Players were invited to imagine how their lives and communities would be different and how they would cope if the world’s oil suddenly dried up. The “plot” unfolded dynamically. First, the players read the “official news” and what other players were saying. Then, using a combination of blog posts, videos, images and even voice mails, they told their own stories of the challenges they were facing. As the crisis continued, players updated their stories with further thoughts, reactions and solutions.

The game ended after 32 days, having engaged thousands of players around world and woven the fabric of 1,500 stories into what [game designer] Ken [Eklund] describes as “living breathing mega narrative that presented some eerily plausible scenarios, complete with practical courses of action to help prevent such an event from actually happening.”

how we get to work makes all the difference

While we try to improve the energy performance of buildings through design, efficient technologies, water re-use and various strategies that are recognised through auditing tools like BREEAM, LEED and Green Star, we can't lose sight of how people get to these buildings. A recent study in the UK starts to put some numbers to the role of transport in the overall performance of office buildings.

As reported on BSRIA, an evaluation of a range of buildings shows that the gains made in making buildings energy-efficient can be completely wiped out: among the case studies, the most efficient building had 80% of employees driving to work, while some less efficient buildings were better located or used by more environmentally-conscious occupants and showed better overall performance if the emissions from transport were considered. Which is why the South African pilot version of the Green Star - Office tool gives credit for locating close to high density residential areas so that there is a greater possibility of office workers living close and walking to work.

redneck mansion

At the great caravan park in the sky.

greening Africa

Regular readers will notice that, along with the redesign of this weblog, I have a new link at the top of the page called 'maps'. This is a link to a map I have started of green projects in SubSaharan Africa. Sounds ambitious, I know, but I am counting on you, dear readers, to tell me what you know about projects that are underway or complete. I am using the term 'green' very loosely here, and a project could be a building that incorporates renewable energy, grey water recycling, passive solar design, and so on. Or it could be any other type of project that addresses mitigation of climate change or adaptation to its effects. As long as it is something that can be mapped. I will have to leave out programmes and other endeavours that don't have a specific location.

My point is to highlight positive things that are being done in Africa. There are a lot of projects out there, but many are just not visible. The first projects on the map are mostly around Cape Town, just because I live here and have some firsthand knowledge of the area; but I don't want this to be a South African map.

If you are a design professional, feel free to let me know of projects done by you or your company - I will provide a link back to your website, as a 'thank you' for letting me know; and as a way for others to see who is working on green projects in different regions. If you are not directly involved in any project, please still let me know of any you are aware of, or names of people who might be able to help.

Here's what I need:

• a title (e.g. building name, or owner, or address);
• location (I need the exact coordinates so that I can find it on Google Maps)
• status of project (year of construction or installation of green features)
• project owner or developer, if appropriate
• type of building, if it is one (e.g. commercial, office, industrial, multi-storey residential or house)
• green features (e.g. solar water heating, wind or solar power generation, other renewable energy source, passive solar design, use of recycled or renewable materials, use of materials with low embodied energy, recycling of construction waste, use of efficient or innovative technologies to reduce energy consumption, rainwater or grey water collection and re-use, green roof, waste management facilities and so on)
• professionals involved in planning, design or implementation

The list is endless, but you get the picture. For some projects, where there are a number of interesting or innovative features, I could include more detailed case studies. Any other suggestions for improving this mapping exercise are very welcome.

fighting for air and water

Apparently the Ugandan government is allowing the destruction of parts of the country's natural rainforest to address energy and agricultural needs. According to Ugandan lawyer Moses Sserwanga, they have allocated a swath of the forest for new electricity transmission lines, and the National Forest Authority - charged with protecting the country's forests - is complicit in the deal. There have also been over 7,000 hectares of the forest given to Mehta Group for sugarcane production. The trend sounds worrying; this is not an isolated habitat, it's a 30,000 ha green lung. UGPulse reported in March last year:

...further depletion of Mabira forest will reduce the water flow of the surrounding streams and rivers and change rain patterns region wide, which in turn will negatively affect agriculture, cattle keeping, electricity supply and thus all economic activities in Uganda. The Ugandan government has given low water levels in Lake Victoria as the reason behind the country's current electricity crisis, and one would expect the nation's leaders to know better than to destroy the major source of water into Lake Victoria.

Environmentalists say that with the water levels in Lake Victoria already low, destroying part of Mabira forest is likely to lower electricity production, and proposed hydroelectric projects such as Bujagali, the River Sezibwa power plant, will be meaningless. In addition to potential disturbances to the microclimate, destruction of Mabira could also violate major global conservation agreements to which Uganda is a signatory, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity (1992). This requires the country to establish and maintain protected conservation areas.

According to African Insights:

President Museveni came out during November of 2007, that Mabira would remain as it was. That was when the Commonwealth Heads of State came to Kampala and the world's attention were on  Uganda. Since then however, the tune has changed and it is back to the give-a-way talk to SCOUL.

Good governance is a prerequisite for environmental protection. Without accountability, the highest bidder wins. But this challenge also raises the thorny issue of national interest versus global efforts to reduce atmospheric carbon. Like the fight over Lake Victoria's water, this is another illustration of how difficult it is to manage a shared resource, even with international agreements in place.