Archive for November, 2008

Any followers or our newsletter and blog site would know that we have been stating for a long time that the only possible survival for renewable energy in this country is through the increase in the price of power. Our power prices are disproportionately cheap. Eskom can see with the advent of maintenance and expansion needed to keep up with development goals, new power stations cost a massive amount of dollars to build. They no longer can rely on cheap coal and labour, and all other commodities needed for running a power station are bought on the international market at international prices. That is why i say the best rout for change is in restructuring cost, read this from Fin24:

“Power prices to triple – 2008/11/21

Vereeniging – The cost of electricity in South Africa is likely to triple over the next decade as Eskom needs to invest heavily in alternative sources of energy with a view to climate change.

So says the power utility, South Africa’s biggest polluter, in a report forming part of the National Business Initiatives’ Carbon Disclosure Project.

It was a willing participant in the project, and its report was attached to that of the top 100 companies (listed on the JSE) that were involved this year. One of the biggest threats to power generation in the short to medium and long-term, it says, is the availability of water.

Eskom is busy implementing short-term measures to save water through dry cooling, but the process in fact releases more greenhouse gases.

Cheap electricity has gone for ever, says the company.

“In the past Eskom generated the cheapest electricity in the world, and now the company is struggling with capacity problems, especially in regard to the supply [of coal] because of, into alia, the tremendous economic growth South Africa has experienced over the past ten years.

“We therefore expect the price of electricity to triple in the coming decade.”

Eskom reckons that it is necessary to have a greater variety in its energy mix, which will also help reduce its carbon footprint.

Renewable energy sources that Eskom is currently considering include wind, solar energy, ocean currents, biomass and hydroelectricity. Eskom’s wind and solar projects are the most advanced at this stage. The introduction of clean technology for the burning of coal forms part of the construction plans for Eskom’s new power stations.

The electricity giant says the greenhouse gases it released into the atmosphere this year amounted to 223.6 metric tonnes, compared to 208.9 last year.

Incite Sustainability, the compiler of the report, points out that Eskom’s carbon footprint is almost three times that of South Africa’s second-biggest polluter, Sasol”

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Reduce your dependence on Grid power, a message from your concerned Greencon agent:

The Herald Newspaper Today:

“ESKOM has warned of possible load-shedding countrywide as a result of high temperatures that have resulted in increased use of air conditioners.

This follows a warning from the municipality yesterday that Nelson Mandela Bay residents could experience power outages. Municipal spokesman Lourens Schoeman said Eskom had warned there was a possibility of load- shedding yesterday.

“They have lost Koeberg 1 and the three 600MV.A generators at Matla due to leaking boiler tubes. All this is unplanned and all customers are requested to conserve energy where possible to reduce the chances of load-shedding.”

Schoeman said he did not know which areas would be affected. An announcement would be made about this. “They have not told us when exactly load-shedding will take place, but they warned that it could happen.”

Eskom national spokesman Fani Zulu confirmed that there was a chance of a power cut, saying the system was tighter than usual due to high temperatures.

“There was an increased use of air conditioners. As a result we are seeing an increase in demand at a time when we are doing maintenance. A number of generators are not available.”

Zulu said everything possible was being done to avoid load-shedding. There were indications that this was successful.

“We will assess the situation (today). There might be a few generators back to relieve the stress in the system.”

Earlier in the year the country was hit by widespread power cuts.

Load-shedding in January forced large gold and platinum mines to stop operating, resulting in a sharp drop in economic growth.

Mandela Bay was also subjected to load-shedding for up to 4½ hours a day, three times a week. Load-shedding was later suspended as a result of reduced demand.”

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Trends in the US and Europe seem to be pointing towards greater awareness in Building built on a more sustainable methodology. Read this report from “Build Design and Construction Magazine” :

In discussing the value of making a change to better alternatives with customers and interested parties, i often quote the findings of the Stern Report. This is more often than not met with a strange twisted look in the face of the person caught in discussion. This report was commissioned back in 2005 by then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown.

The British government was trying to get to the bottom of what the cost of moving towards a more environmentally safe and sustainable planet would actually cost. For this Lord Stern was commissioned. The result was a 700 page document that really brought the severity of our circumstances to bare. Here is a highlighted version from the Guardian Newspaper.

As Eco “:Greenies” we at Greencon originally became interested in the environment through growing concerns with water security and safety in South Africa. Being one of the driest places on earth coupled with the impact of global warming, the very serious disappearance of our most precious resource was for us a great motivator to help provide water purifying and recycling products. Read the following article from the Business Day;

“THE controversial suspension of researcher Anthony Turton from the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) over his damning report on the quality of our drinking water has brought the subject of water safety to the fore of public debate again.

Turton — a political scientist and researcher in the field of water resource management — was suspended from the CSIR last week after being prevented from presenting a paper in which he concludes that “we are heading for a significant crisis in the water sector”.

That crisis was likely to fan social instability and constrain future economic development, he said.

His alarm on the looming water crisis follows similar warnings earlier this year by other water resource management experts, which drew vehement denials in Parliament from Water Affairs and Forestry Minister Lindiwe Hendricks.

The experts said then that SA’s strained water supply system was putting the health of millions at risk, and warned that a crisis similar to that in electricity supply would develop if no immediate steps were taken to preserve water quality.

One of the central arguments in Turton’s planned presentation to a CSIR conference last week was that SA faced a water crisis both because of declining water infrastructure and because of a lack of skilled personnel.

In his paper, circulated internally at the CSIR weeks before the conference, Turton says the government must either accept that the development targets of the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for SA are unattainable, or must launch a radical rethink of how to mobilise SA’s science, engineering and technological capacity.

“After all, the Uhuru Decade came to an end with the electricity crisis in early 2008. This Uhuru Decade has been manifest all across Africa when a liberation movement has inherited infrastructure that works for about 10 years before starting to break down through lack of investment in operation, maintenance and skilled human capacity,” Turton says.

“In SA’s case that infrastructure was particularly robust, so it has lasted a decade and a half, but it is now clearly under pressure and if left alone will collapse piece by piece, in the mid-term future.”

The trend in infrastructure investment for water at the national level shows this prognosis to be probable in a startling way, he says.

To illustrate this point, Turton says a significant proportion of SA’s municipalities have no civil engineering professional support, with rural areas affected the most.

“It is precisely these rural areas that are most likely to be affected by the deteriorating water quality arising from eutrophication in rivers and dams. It is also these local authorities that are the least capable of adapting water treatment processes and plant to remove microcystins, endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) and antiretroviral medication (ARVs) that are likely to arise from a population with a heavy burden of AIDS-related diseases,” he says.

Turton says SA has failed to mobilise what previous scholars have described as “social ingenuity” — a necessary precondition for “technical ingenuity” — the capacity of a nation to develop solutions to problems driven by external change.

He reiterates the widely held view that SA is failing to produce enough engineers to plug the skills gap and says that lack of investment in water research since 1985 means SA is now “flying blind as a nation”.

There was also an urgent need for a study of people living near mines to determine the effect of chronic exposure to heavy metals, he says. “This will be complex and costly, but we need such a study as a matter of national emergency.”

Turton’s comments about the supply and safety of SA’s drinking water echo concerns that have been raised in recent years.

These worries have been heightened by recent outbreaks of disease that have left thousands sick and scores dead after drinking contaminated water.

These deaths, especially those of 83 babies in the Eastern Cape earlier this year, are directly attributed to the shortage of skilled personnel to manage the water supply.

The dire shortage of technical skills in municipalities, which are critical to the delivery of healthy water to millions of consumers, especially in poorer areas, has also been acknowledged by the water affairs and forestry department.

Engineers and technicians are instrumental in the construction, maintenance and repair of water infrastructure, as well as the treatment of water.

According to the CSIR, Dr Turton has 19 years’ experience of strategic planning and risk assessment in areas of contestation, including negotiations that ended complex and protracted periods of conflict.

Included in this were the negotiations that led to the South African withdrawal from Angola; the implementation of UN Resolution 435 and the independence of Namibia; the secret negotiations that led to the release of political prisoners and the Codesa constitutional talks; and the secret diplomatic negotiations that ended Mozambique’s civil war.

Turton has a PhD in the hydropolitics of SA, has written extensively on water resource management and has a specialist interest in governance.

He serves on the editorial board of the International Journal of Water Resources Development and is an invited speaker to major international events.”

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When you listen to the experts out there, and hear about the massive projective costs of climate change, it enough to drive you into a perminant state of depression. I picked up this article from an IT blog. Serves as motivation for all of us to get people to change as quick as possible.

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Coal industry ‘pensive’ about Obama. The should be, considering the amount of pollution they contribute to the environment. The simple truth is that whether you change technologies or you “clean-up” existing ones, there is no way to do it without significantly increasing the amount that electricity costs. So keep making the change to products that use the sun or wind to create power and become as independent as possible.

by Jim Suhr, Associated Press, St. Louis, Mo. 

Venture Capital firms all over the US are beginning to court the decision makers, in an attempt to show them that the future of electric cars is here now. The grid is there so it is one of the easiest things to tap into. We at Greencon hope to see more activity like this here in SA. Maybe in the not so distant future, you can charge your car free with one of our PV solar systems.

Bay Area mayors endorse $1 billion plan for electric cars, by Matt Nauman

Governments, not least of all ours, need to be far more aggressive in there attempt to get people to change there energy consumption habits. Reports from all over consistently point to increased carbon production and worsening climate conditions.

“Time is running out in the fight against global warming, the United Nations’ top climate change official warned as a new round of UN talks got under way on Thursday.

“There is little time left to get a solid negotiating text on the table. Clearly the clock is ticking,” said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.“People in a burning house cannot afford to lose time in an argument,” he said, citing an Ashanti proverb.

The Accra gathering must strive to “reach agreement on the rules and tools” that developed countries will use to cut greenhouse gas emissions, he told more than 1 600 delegates from 160 nations.

Ghana‘s President John Kufuor echoed the sense of urgency in his opening remarks, noting that his country was already suffering the consequences of global warming.

Rainfall in Ghana has decreased by 20% in three decades, and 1 000 square kilometres of fertile agricultural land in the upper Volta Delta will be lost to rising sea levels and flooding if temperatures rise at their current pace, he said.

The expert-level meeting, which runs until August 27, is the third UN climate change conference since nations committed to adopting a binding climate accord no later than December 2009.

It is the last meeting ahead of a ministerial summit in Poznan, Poland, in December where rich countries will be under intense pressure to nail down near-term commitments for reducing greenhouse gases.

The Group of Eight industrialised powers pledged to halve emissions by 2050, but critics say intermediate goals are needed.

“The real political commitment is short- and medium-term,” Connie Hedegaard, the Danish Minister for Climate and Energy, told delegates.

“We have to speed up the pace. The negotiations here in Accra must deliver concrete results” about what technologies will be used to cut emissions, she said.

Africa is arguably the continent most vulnerable to the potential ravages of climate change, which range from extreme drought to violent storms to rising sea levels.

De Boer challenged delegates to be “ambitious”, and said if they failed Africa would continue, in terms of climate change, to be the “forgotten continent”.

He insisted that rich countries step up financial assistance to help Africa with global warming.

African produces the fewest emissions, he pointed out, but will likely well pay the heaviest price.

De Boer and Kufuor underlined the threat ofdeforestation, which is destroying one of nature’s most powerful natural buffers against global warming.

The world’s forests — which are disappearing at a rate of about 30-million hectares per year — soak up more than 20% of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

“Governments need to focus on reducing emissions caused by deforestation and forest degradation,” and on how to reward countries that protect forests, said de Boer.

The problem is particularly acute in Amazonia, central Africa and Indonesia, experts note.

WWF, an environmental group, called on the
Accra meeting to adopt the Olympic motto of “faster, higher, stronger”.

“Progress on substance … must be swifter, the level of ambition by both developed and developing countries higher, and the measures to reduce CO2 [carbon dioxide] emissions stronger,” said Kim Carstensen,
director of the WWF’s Global Climate Change Initiative. – AFP”

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“Johannesburg – Eskom has signed an export credit financing loan agreement with German bank KfW-IPEX for approximately R2.8bn, the power utility said on Wednesday.
The agreement was signed by finance director Bongani Nqwababa and KfW-IPEX Bank’s first vice president, Peter Purkl in Johannesburg.

The loan would be used to partially finance the six boilers that the Hitachi Power consortium would supply for the new Medupi Power Station in Lephalale.

The loan is repayable over 12 years after the commissioning of Medupi.

Speaking at the signing ceremony, Nqwababa said Eskom’s partnership with KfW-IPEX was important in ensuring that Eskom continued to secure and stabilise the South African power system

Source: Fin24″

Do the math. Simply put we will be paying through higher energy costs. Make the right choice and move away from the grid.

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