Comprehensive water management

Water and the lack thereof have been cited by water experts to be at least as big a problem as climate change in the twenty first century. About 2 billion people around the world either lack access to sufficient quantities of water or are supplied with water unfit for drinking and this shortage is going to worsen in the near future due to the rise of the world’s population and to the redistribution of water recourses due to global warming.

According to UBS underinvestment in water infrastructure has resulted in great inefficiencies and cities like London and Shanghai are wasting more than 60% of their water supply due to something as simple to fix as leaky pipes.

Globally, UN reports put the loss of drinking water before it reaches the consumer at 33%. The total cost of ‘non revenue water’ is conservatively estimated at $14,6bn per year. One of the first companies geared to comprehensively address this is Israeli company Miya.

Miya is the first global player to offer a comprehensive water efficiency solution and a one stop shop for water loss projects. Their mission is to help the cities of the world benefit from the huge opportunity presented by water loss reduction and effective management of urban water. Their products and services include pressure management, leak detection, filters, pumps and measurement tools.

The benefits of their solutions for Water Loss Management are:
• Produce /purchase less water
• Energy savings due to improved efficiency of the system
• Reducing the amount of chemicals used to treat the water
• Saving or postponing investments in increasing water capacity or developing alternative water sources
• Extending the lifespan of existing infrastructures
• Reducing maintenance cost
• Increase revenues by reducing commercial losses caused by lack of metering and/or poor metering and billing policies.
• Lower contamination risks to the water supply from bursts and antiquated pipes

For more information, read here…

Direct Carbon Fuel Cells

The Direct Carbon Fuel Cell (DCFC) converts fuel to electricity directly rather than burning it to boil water to make steam to turn a turbine, to turn a generator, to produce electricity. The DCFC can convert solid fuels to electricity at 70% efficiency and reduce CO2 emissions by 50% without sequestration.

A Fuel Cell is an electrochemical device that efficiently converts a fuel’s chemical energy directly to electrical energy without burning the fuel. However, instead of using gaseous fuels, as is typically done, DCFCs use aggregates of extremely fine (10- to 1,000-nanometer-diameter) carbon particles distributed in a mixture of molten lithium, sodium, Yttrium-stabilized zirconium or potassium carbonate at a temperature of 600 to 850°C. The overall cell reaction is carbon and oxygen forming carbon dioxide and electricity.

The reaction yields 80 percent of the carbon–oxygen combustion energy as electricity, yet no burning of the carbon takes place. DCFCs provide up to 1 kilowatt of power per square meter of cell surface area — a rate sufficiently high for practical applications.

The overall process of producing electricity in a DCFC from biomass gains efficiency by its simplicity. It involves only two steps: (1) drying (and/or pyrolysis, or hydrothermal carbonization) to obtain char, and (2) feeding the resulting fuel directly to the DCFC.

If the carbon feedstock for the fuel cell were to be derived from biomass, and the CO2 captured and sequestered, super-efficient carbon-negative electricity would be generated. That is: electricity the use of which results in the active removal of CO2 from the atmosphere

DirectCarbon, a company spun out of Stanford University in 2006, are currently trying to commercialise this technology. Great progress has also been made at the Max Planck Institute in Germany and the University of Queensland in Australia.

For more information read here orhere.

Jeremy Baskin – SA has compelling reasons to cut hothouse emissions

SA has no detailed climate change policy, as the government acknowledges. It is too late to develop one before next month’s Copenhagen conference. This is disappointing, given that SA is a Group of 20 economy and the world’s 13th-biggest CO² emitter, but not fatal as long as detailed, informed policy measures are in the pipeline.

Most troubling is SA appears to be going into Copenhagen with a position arguably not in the national interest, nor in the interests of combating climate change. It is also hard to square with some of the strong policy signals given by the government to date.

I write as a South African living abroad, who has for the past eight years worked on issues of climate, development and business risk and watched the policy debates in a number of countries closely.

Southern Africa is likely to be among the world’s hardest-hit regions when it comes to the physical, human and economic effects of climate change. These effects will vary between regions, districts, towns and suburbs (the details urgently need more research). But all indications are that changes in temperature, weather patterns and rainfall are likely to be especially nasty in Southern Africa and affect the livelihood and physical existence of millions of people. So SA has a strong self-interest in achieving the maximum possible mitigation and the highest possible global emission-reduction targets.

Without cuts from all major emitters, including developing countries such as China, the biosphere won’t get the reprieve it needs to avoid dangerous climate change. It is vital to encourage deep cuts by China, the US and Europe, which together account for more than 55% of global emissions. Our focus in international talks should be on maximising the extent of overall global mitigation.

In relation to global mitigation targets, it is in our interests to bridge the developed/

developing country divide, notwithstanding our historic and emotional identification with the Third World. There is, of course, a real issue of climate justice. The argument is ethically persuasive that most developing countries are not responsible for historic emissions, and they need emissions headroom to develop and financial assistance to adapt.

This is the position adopted by the African bloc, and argued strongly by, among others, India and China. There is certainly a valid argument to be made by, say, Mali or Bangladesh or even India (which emits less than two tones of CO² per capita a year).

These are all poor countries using less than their share of a scientifically credible global carbon budget. On any consideration of equity, they deserve our support for special consideration. But even China (with about half SA’s per capita emissions) is not a credible member of this group, a fact it implicitly recognises when it makes major emissions- reduction commitments even as it avoids the language of targets.

We delude ourselves to think we are in this special category. We are already a high-emissions country, one of the highest per capita emitters both historically and today. The science now suggests that, if we are to reduce the risk of dangerous climate change, the biosphere can only tolerate concentrations closer to 350ppm than to the more commonly cited 450ppm. This, in turn, equates to a global carbon budget of about two or three tones per capita emissions by 2050, about a fifth of SA’s current emissions.

Other than in the very short term, we will not get away with the argument some in government are voicing, that we be allowed to increase emissions in the name of development and get financial assistance to cut later. We will be accused, as the middle class is in India, of “hiding behind the poor”. Not only will we not get away with it, but we risk undermining our primary interest, which is to see the highest possible global mitigation efforts. The most we can expect, and what we should push for, is some financial assistance to transition to a low-carbon economy now.

It is true that our average emissions, like our middle-income country status, conceal deep inequalities. This is an argument for ensuring our domestic adaptation and mitigation policies, at the very least, reduce inequality. It is not an argument for being given space to ramp up our emissions. Many countries have seen growth and development and still have lower emission profiles today than we do — South Korea, Brazil, and post- war Japan to name but a few.

To be credible in pushing for global reduction SA needs strong domestic mitigation targets. From outside it appears SA may be diluting its previously announced targets. This would be unfortunate. “Growth and development first, climate later” may be in the interests of the fossil fuel industry, or convenient for politicians facing other challenges. But it is a false dichotomy ultimately not in the national economic interest.

The truth is that globally we are seeing the emergence of a price on carbon. The price is still low, but the trend is clear and it is upwards. As one of the world’s most carbon- intensive economies, SA is highly exposed. Traditionally, we have used the lure of cheap electricity to attract investment and mineral- beneficiation projects. We are unlikely to do so in future if our electricity remains carbon intensive. Future aluminium smelters, for example, will gravitate to countries such as Iceland, Brazil or New Zealand, which have extensive geothermal or hydropower.

Our exports are vulnerable. Markets such as Japan, the US, Germany, China and the UK have signalled their carbon pricing intentions. A carbon tariff is emerging. Agricultural producers and component suppliers will have been asked by customers to account for the carbon-intensity of their products. If SA’s wine producers, for example, are not already planning to slash their footprint and lobby the government for low-carbon electricity they should sleep uneasily in the knowledge that their competitors in other countries are.

Given SA’s unemployment, the evidence globally is that renewable energy is substantially more employment friendly per megawatt hour or per rand invested than carbon-intensive alternatives. Viewed from afar, it is impressive SA is putting so much effort into fleshing out its climate policies and starting to pay more attention to the neglected challenge of adaptation. The devil will be in the detail and affected by electricity- sector investment, support for renewables at scale (such as pilot concentrated solar power plants), energy efficiency regulation, forestry policy, tax incentives, and so on.

It is in our interests to transition to a low- carbon economy sooner rather than later. notwithstanding our deep reliance on the resources sector, the best hope for the future is a low carbon one. It is not an easy route, and will involve higher energy prices and difficult structural changes. Handled skilfully it could also help to reduce inequality in the country. Those who argue, in relation to climate, “not us, not much, and not now” are being shortsighted and do the country a disservice.

* Jeremy Baskin is the Director of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership’s Australian office.

Original article: Jeremy Baskin. Business Day. 9 November 2009. Read more…

More renewable energy sources added to REFIT

Biomass, biogas and three varieties of solar power technology were on Friday added to the list of renewable energy sources that qualify for feed-in tariffs to be paid by Eskom.

The tariffs, known in South Africa as Refit, are set to top up earnings of independent power producers (IPPs). They are determined by the National Energy Regulator of SA (Nersa).

The latest tariffs are

• R3.13 a kilowatt-hour for concentrating solar power without storage;
• R3.94 for grid-connected solar photovoltaic systems producing more than 1 megawatt;
• R1.18 for solid biomass;
• 96c for biogas; and
• R2.31 for concentrating solar power with six hours of storage.

It estimated that the cost of generating electricity from coal would more than triple from 51.9c a kilowatt-hour this year to R1.66 in 2030, while the cost of power from nuclear sources would increase from 72c a kilowatt-hour to R1.76.

Meanwhile, the cheapest renewable generation technology in two decades would be landfill gas at 75c a kilowatt-hour, down from 90c currently, Nersa forecast. The next cheapest source would be biogas at nearly 87c a kilowatt-hour, against 93c currently.

Wind and biomass were projected to be the next cheapest in 2030 at about 89c a kilowatt-hour, down from R1.25 and R1.18, respectively.

Original article: Ingi Salgado. Business Report. 2 November 2009. Read more…

Launch of ‘Ubuntu: South Africa’s search for a sustainable future’

CPSL South Africa, in association with the Forum for the Future’s Green Futures publication and the British High Commission, will on the 19th November launch Ubuntu: South Africa’s search for a sustainable future.

Ubuntu is a once-off supplement to the bi-monthly “Green Futures”, the UK’s leading corporate sustainability magazine. It will be distributed internationally and through the Financial Mail’s 20th November issue  in South Africa. It looks at the political and economic hurdles South Africa faces as we square up to the accelerating impacts of climate change and the challenges of energy supply, water scarcity, food security, housing, transport and the 2010 World Cup.

Leading South African sustainability experts have been commissioned to write about these topics and the result reflects top-level analysis and opinion. In addition to reflecting on the challenges the country faces, pioneering examples of emerging sustainability practices in South Africa are showcased.

Ubuntu is edited in South Africa by Monica Graaff, the 2008 Environmental Journalist of the Year and former editor of the award-winning sustainable business magazine, Mind Shift.

The Risks from Sea Level Rise – assessments from Australia & Cape Town

Reuters reported today on an Australian parliamentary committee’s finding that $137bn worth of property in this island continent was at risk from rising sea levels and more frequent storms. 80 percent of Australia’s 21 million people live on the coast and authorities are split on whether to adopt a policy of retreat or defence against rising seas.

The social and economic impact of sea level rise was the topic at our recent Cambridge Resilience Forum session (get the podcast here). A 2008 risk assessment done for the City of Cape Town concluded that within the next 25 years there is an 85% probability of 60,9km2 (2% of the Metro area) being covered by sea for a short period, with an accompanying expected loss of real estate value estimated at just under R20bn. As Prof Geoff Brundrit explained, these estimates are predicated on only a 15 centimeters rise in the sea level. Even such a relatively small rise changes the frequency and intensity of extreme storm events and this causes the damage. A more dramatic sea level rise, when the polar ice caps melt for example, causing coastal areas to be underwater permanently, is not even included in current estimates for the next 30-50 years.

Gregg Oelofse of the City of Cape Town elucidated some of the challenges for government. The possible mitigation strategy of building more storm walls and barriers can actually increase the impact of storm events. The Cape Town study done in 2008 was one of the first in the world and has placed the City on the forefront of planning and thinking about these issues.

Similar to the Australian report, the Forum session also highlighted the importance and complexity of legal liability and insurance cover related to climate change and sea level rise. At the Cape Town event Herman de Meyer, underwriting specialist of Santam, emphasised that insurers need to collaborate with scientists and policy makers to better understand these risks.

The 16 October edition of Engineering News carried an article on the sea level rise Forum session. Read the online article here…

Lester Brown – The rising tide of environmental refugees

Original article: Lester Brown. Earth Policy Institute. 22 October 2009. Read here…

A very though provoking excerpt from the book ‘Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to save Civilization’. It concludes with these spine chilling words: “During this century we must deal with the effects of trends—rapid population growth, advancing deserts, and rising seas—that we set in motion during the last century. Our choice is a simple one: reverse these trends or risk being overwhelmed by them.”

Our early twenty-first century civilization is being squeezed between advancing deserts and rising seas. Measured by the biologically productive land area that can support human habitation, the earth is shrinking. Mounting population densities, once generated solely by population growth, are now also fueled by the relentless advance of deserts and may soon be affected by the projected rise in sea level. As overpumping depletes aquifers, millions more are forced to relocate in search of water.

Desert expansion in sub-Saharan Africa, principally in the Sahelian countries, is displacing millions of people—forcing them to either move southward or migrate to North Africa. A 2006 U.N. conference on desertification in Tunisia projected that by 2020 up to 60 million people could migrate from sub-Saharan Africa to North Africa and Europe. This flow of migrants has been under way for many years.

In mid-October 2003, Italian authorities discovered a boat bound for Italy carrying refugees from Africa. After being adrift for more than two weeks and having run out of fuel, food, and water, many of the passengers had died. At first the dead were tossed overboard. But after a point, the remaining survivors lacked the strength to hoist the bodies over the side. The dead and the living shared the boat, resembling what a rescuer described as “a scene from Dante’s Inferno.”

The refugees were believed to be Somalis who had embarked from Libya, but the survivors would not reveal their country of origin, lest they be sent home. We do not know whether they were political, economic, or environmental refugees. Failed states like Somalia produce all three. We do know that Somalia is an ecological disaster, with overpopulation, overgrazing, and the resulting desertification destroying its pastoral economy.

Perhaps the largest flow of Somali migrants is into Yemen, another failing state. In 2008 an estimated 50,000 migrants and asylum seekers reached Yemen, 70 percent more than in 2007. And during the first three months of 2009 the migrant flow was up 30 percent over the same period in 2008. These numbers simply add to the already unsustainable pressures on Yemen’s land and water resources, hastening its decline.

On April 30, 2006, a man fishing off the coast of Barbados discovered a 20-foot boat adrift with the bodies of 11 young men on board, bodies that were “virtually mummified” by the sun and salty ocean spray. As the end drew near, one passenger left a note tucked between two bodies: “I would like to send my family in Basada [Senegal] a sum of money. Please excuse me and goodbye.” The author of the note was apparently one of a group of 52 who had left Senegal on Christmas Eve aboard a boat destined for the Canary Islands, a jumping off point for Europe. They must have drifted for some 2,000 miles, ending their trip in the Caribbean. This boat was not unique. During the first weekend of September 2006, police intercepted boats from Mauritania with a record total of nearly 1,200 people on board.

For those living in Central American countries, including Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, Mexico is often the gateway to the United States. In 2008, Mexican immigration authorities reported some 39,000 detentions and 89,000 deportations.

In the city of Tapachula on the Guatemala-Mexico border, young men in search of jobs wait along the tracks for a slow-moving freight train passing through the city en route to the north. Some make it onto the train. Others do not. The Jesús el Buen Pastor refuge is home to 25 amputees who lost their grip and fell under a train while trying to board. For these young men, says Olga Sánchez Martínez, the director of the refuge, this is the “end of their American dream.” A local priest, Flor María Rigoni, calls the migrants attempting to board the trains “the kamikazes of poverty.”

Today, bodies washing ashore in Italy, Spain, and Turkey are a daily occurrence, the result of desperate acts by desperate people. And each day Mexicans risk their lives in the Arizona desert trying to reach jobs in the United States. On average, some 100,000 or more Mexicans leave rural areas every year, abandoning plots of land too small or too eroded to make a living. They either head for Mexican cities or try to cross illegally into the United States. Many of those who try to cross the Arizona desert perish in its punishing heat. Since 2001, some 200 bodies have been found along the Arizona border each year.

With the vast majority of the 2.4 billion people to be added to the world by 2050 coming in countries where water tables are already falling, water refugees are likely to become commonplace. They will be most common in arid and semiarid regions where populations are outgrowing the water supply and sinking into hydrological poverty. Villages in northwestern India are being abandoned as aquifers are depleted and people can no longer find water. Millions of villagers in northern and western China and in parts of Mexico may have to move because of a lack of water.

Advancing deserts are squeezing expanding populations into an ever smaller geographic area. Whereas the U.S. Dust Bowl displaced 3 million people, the advancing desert in China’s Dust Bowl provinces could displace tens of millions.

Africa, too, is facing this problem. The Sahara Desert is pushing the populations of Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria northward toward the Mediterranean. In a desperate effort to deal with drought and desertification, Morocco is geographically restructuring its agriculture, replacing grain with less thirsty orchards and vineyards.

In Iran, villages abandoned because of spreading deserts or a lack of water already number in the thousands. In the vicinity of Damavand, a small town within an hour’s drive of Tehran, 88 villages have been abandoned. And as the desert takes over in Nigeria, farmers and herders are forced to move, squeezed into a shrinking area of productive land. Desertification refugees typically end up in cities, many in squatter settlements. Others migrate abroad.

In Latin America, deserts are expanding and forcing people to move in both Brazil and Mexico. In Brazil, some 66 million hectares of land are affected, much of it concentrated in the country’s northeast. In Mexico, with a much larger share of arid and semiarid land, the degradation of cropland now extends over 59 million hectares.

While desert expansion and water shortages are now displacing millions of people, rising seas promise to displace far greater numbers in the future, given the concentration of the world’s population in low-lying coastal cities and rice-growing river deltas. The numbers could eventually reach the hundreds of millions, offering yet another powerful reason for stabilizing both climate and population.

In the end, the issue with rising seas is whether governments are strong enough to withstand the political and economic stress of relocating large numbers of people while suffering heavy coastal losses of housing and industrial facilities.

During this century we must deal with the effects of trends—rapid population growth, advancing deserts, and rising seas—that we set in motion during the last century. Our choice is a simple one: reverse these trends or risk being overwhelmed by them.

Andrew Revkin – Thought Experiments on Birth and Death

At the Business and Environment Programme’s 15-year anniversary held in London on 29 June 2009, Madame Dr. Baige Zhao,Vice Minister: Population and National Family Planning Commission of People’s Republic of China, pointed out that China’s population policies have since 1970 lead to 400 million fewer births in that country. This has significantly reduced the stress on the environment and carbon emissions as the annual CO2 emissions of these 400 million Chinese would have been about 1520 million tons (based on China’s current 3,8 tons per capita per year CO2 emissions).

Against this backdrop, there was a very interesting recent blog by Andrew Revkin of the New York Times. In response to earlier comments by Revkin that programs offering family planning information and services to women seeking smaller families had a climate value by avoiding emissions of greenhouse gases, Rush Limbaugh commented:

This guy from The New York Times, if he really thinks that humanity is destroying the planet, humanity is destroying the climate, that human beings in their natural existence are going to cause the extinction of life on Earth — Andrew Revkin. Mr. Revkin, why don’t you just go kill yourself and help the planet by dying?

In 2010 the Cambridge Resilience Forum will present a session on population and sustainability.

Original article: Andrew Revkin. New York Times. 20 October 2009. Read the article here…

Forum online booking launched

We are very excited to announce that the online booking system for the Cambridge Resilience Forum has now been launched at www.cpsl.co.za/forum/register/ People can now register as members, book for events and pay online.

The very secure online payment system caters for Visa and Mastercard credit cards, but there is also the option to pay via Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT).

We trust that this new system will contribute to the Forum’s objective of offering convenient, flexible  and cost effective opportunities for continuing professional development.

The launch of the online booking system comes as we announce the double treat in November with two exciting sessions each in Cape Town and Johannesburg.

Podcast: Forum sea level rise

A recording of the Cambridge Resilience Forum event on Sea Level Rise held on 30 September 2009 in Cape Town. The format of the event was a panel discussion, moderated by Peter Willis of CPSL. The panelists were:

• Prof. Geoff Brundrit – Special Advisor on Oceans and Climate Change for the National Department of Environmental Affairs
• Gregg Oelofse – Environmental Resource Management, City of Cape Town
• Anton Cartwright – Economist, Econologic
• Herman de Meyer – Underwriting specialist, Santam

To download the podcast click here… or click ‘play ‘below to listen.

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