A recent study from the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) suggests that the continental U.S. has the potential to produce 37 million gigawatt-hours of electricity from wind power each year. That’s a huge leap from the 52,026 gigawatt-hours we used in 2008.
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The following is a break down of the two carbon-cutting strategies:
The scientists created sustainable polymers used in common plastics that could replace traditional polymers that use chemicals from fossil fuels. The bioengineered polymers may be what is needed to create truly green-friendly plastic products.
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After recently having a domestic hot water geyser fail and investigating the potential of replacing it with a solar unit, I definitely saw the need for something different to advance the penetration of solar water heating in South Africa. While replacing my electric geyser costs R 5,500, an equivalent solar installation costs around R 25,000. Eskom, the state electricity generator, provides a subsidy of around R 3,000 and indicates a payback period is 5 to 8 years. Read the rest of this entry »
In the brewery the waste is a collection of unavoidable losses of carbohydrate and protein rich materials, which would otherwise be sold as beer or byproduct and the large quantities of water used to maintain a hygienic operation. Read the rest of this entry »
Two of the widely used alternatives for collecting the suns energy are the concentrated solar power (CSP) plant where sunlight is focussed on a receiver in which a circulating working fluid is heated and used as the heating media for a conventional power station and the photo voltaic (PV) plant where sunlight is converted directly into electrical energy. Read the rest of this entry »
The Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) is convinced that the contribution of solar energy to the world’s energy needs is about to boom. It is already developing projects in India, Australia and in the South Western States of the US. Now it is co-operating with the Department of Minerals and Energy (DME) to develop a Solar Park in the Northern Cape that would speed up South Africa’s uptake of renewable energy. Read the rest of this entry »
The funding
French development bank Agence Française de Développement (AFD) announced, at the end of September 2009, that it would be extending a €120-million credit facility to commercial banks in South Africa, to be used for smaller energy efficiency and renewable energy projects.
South African banks Absa, Nedbank and the Industrial Development Corporation are to distribute the credit as loan capital for the projects of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs).
After South Africa speedily set up a renewable energy strategy the focus moved to ethanol and biodiesel with the involvement of large companies including SASOL.
First to falter was ethanol, where Ethanol Africa had actually started site works for its plant in Bothaville, when government got cold feet about using maize, the staple food of the poor of South Africa, to power cars.
Later the world food crisis lead to the Food for Fuel debate and an effective halt to the promotion of biofuels from agricultural production. There were also other smaller and less legitimate operations such as a franchise scheme based on low cost imported palm oil and even algal processing that turned out to have been “demonstrated” using scum from the farm dam!
Dairy farm anaerobic lagoons without coversIndependent power producer (IPP) Lesedi Biogas Project (LBP) is planning to build one of the world’s largest open-air feedlot manure-to-power plants, in Heidelberg, near Johannesburg, South Africa. Such plants use the anaerobic fermentation (bacterial fermentation of organic waste, with little or no oxygen present) to produce a methane rich gas which can be used to produce electricity or burn for heat.
The plant will be situated at the Karan Beef feedlot, which will supply the manure from its feedlot to the LBP. This would initially amount to 110,000 tons per year of manure, which would allow the production of 3,8 MW of base-load power reaching 6,2 MW of peak power. Read the rest of this entry »
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