SA saved 400Mw during Earth Hour

SA saved 400 MW during Earth Hour

By: Creamer Media Reporter

30th March 2009

South Africans who participated in Earth Hour on Saturday saved about 400 MW of electricity, 400 t of carbon dioxide, 224 t of coal and about 576 000 l of water, power utility Eskom reported on Monday.

Earth Hour was organised by the World Wildlife Fund in an effort to get one-billion people worldwide to switch off their lights for one hour.

“The 400 MW translates to about four-million 100 W bulbs or 6,7-million 60 W bulbs switched off on Saturday. This shows a concerted effort by about one-million households,” said Eskom MD corporate services and Eskom climate change champion Dr Steve Lennon.

Lights on average consumed about 10% of household electricity, whereas geysers used as much as 40% of the total electricity bill, commented Lennon, highlighting the difference that could have been made if South Africans had also turned off their geysers during Earth Hour.

“We believe that the Earth Hour initiative has created incredible excitement around the need for efficient use of energy. As South Africa’s primary supplier of electricity, our hope is that all South Africans harness this excitement and use energy wisely every day of the year,” said Lennon.

City of Johannesburg member of the Mayoral Committee for Environment Prema Naidoo also on Monday applauded the Earth Hour initiative.

“We hope that this symbolic gesture has demonstrated to the world that people everywhere are concerned about this issue, and are willing to act,” he commented.

Naidoo expressed the need for people to take action against climate change and global warning now, saying that it hoped government’s National Energy Efficiency Campaign would be supported by every individual, business and energy player.

“Here in South Africa, we have unique reasons to be concerned about the energy issue. It is not widely understood that the production of electricity produces enormous amounts of carbon dioxide, one of the main greenhouse gases. As a result of our habits of energy wastage, we have become the eleventh highest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in the world, he said.

Edited by: Mariaan Webb

Southern Ocean close to acid tipping point

Australian researchers have discovered that the tipping point for ocean acidification caused by human-induced CO2 emissions is much closer than first thought.

Scientists from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and CSIRO looked at seasonal changes in pH and the concentration of an important chemical compound, carbonate, in the Southern Ocean.

The results, published in today's Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, show that these seasonal changes will actually amplify the effects of human carbon dioxide emissions on ocean acidity, speeding up the process of ocean acidification by 30 years.

Dr Ben McNeil, senior research fellow at the UNSW's Climate Change Research Centre, says the ocean is an enormous sink for CO2, but unfortunately this comes at a cost.

"The ocean is a fantastic sponge for CO2, but as it dissolves in the ocean it reduces the pH of the ocean, so the ocean becomes more acidic," says Dr McNeil.

This acidification makes life especially hard for marine creatures such as pteropods - an important type of plankton found in the Southern Ocean - whose shells are made up largely of calcium carbonate.

Once the acidity of the Southern Ocean reaches a certain level, the shells of these and other calcareous marine creatures will start to dissolve.

"That's a really bad point to get to," says McNeil. "After that point, we can't go back unless we suck the CO2 out of the atmosphere."

This so-called 'tipping point' of acidification had been predicted to occur when atmospheric CO2 levels hit 550 parts per million, around the year 2060.

However, the new research shows levels of the carbonate that these creatures need to build and maintain their shells drops naturally in winter, due to natural variations in factors such as ocean temperature, currents and mixing, and pH.

This means the tipping point is likely to be reached at far lower atmospheric CO2 levels - around 450 ppm, says McNeil, which also happens to be the target set by the IPCC for stabilisation of CO2 emissions.

"That's the benchmark that a lot of climate scientists have said we want to reach," he says, but this concentration is forecast to be reached around 2030.

Dr McNeil says ocean acidification could lead to large scale ecosystem changes, affecting not just plankton but other marine life including fish, whales and dolphins.

"They're at the base of the food chain ... so right now we don't really know the ramifications."

from:
"EconomicDemocracy Coop" econdemocracy@gmail.com

Government's CO2 mitigation strategy

MITIGATION STRATEGY

With reference specifically to our mitigation strategy, Cabinet adopted the following approach:

1. The Start Now strategic option as outlined in the LTMS will be further implemented. This is based, amongst others, on accelerated energy efficiency and conservation across all sectors, including industry, commerce, transport and residential, inter alia through more stringent building standards.
2. We will invest in the Reach for the Goal strategic option by setting ambitious research and development targets focussing on carbon-friendly technologies, identifying new resources and affecting behavioral change.
3. Furthermore, regulatory mechanisms as set out in the Scale Up strategic option will be combined with economic instruments such as taxes and incentives under the Use the Market strategic option, with a view to:
• Setting ambitious and mandatory (as distinct from voluntary) targets for energy efficiency and in other sub-national sectors. In the next few months each sector will be required to do work to enable it to decide on actions and targets in relation to this overall framework.
• Based on the electricity-crisis response, government’s energy efficiency policies and strategies will be continuously reviewed and amended to reflect more ambitious national targets aligned with the LTMS.
• Increasing the price on carbon through an escalating CO2 tax, or an alternative market mechanism.
• Diversifying the energy mix away from coal whilst shifting to cleaner coal, by for example introducing more stringent thermal efficiency and emissions standards for coal fired power stations.
• Setting similar targets for electricity generated from both renewable and nuclear energy sources by the end of the next two decades.
• Laying the basis for a net zero-carbon electricity sector in the long term.
• Incentivising renewable energy through feed-in tariffs.
• Exploring and developing carbon capture and storage (CCS) for coal fired power stations and all coal-to-liquid (CTL) plants, and not approving new coal fired power stations without carbon capture readiness.
• Introducing industrial policy that favours sectors using less energy per unit of economic output and building domestic industries in these emerging sectors.
• Setting ambitious and where appropriate mandatory national targets for the reduction of transport emissions, including through stringent and escalating fuel efficiency standards, facilitating passenger modal shifts towards public transport and the aggressive promotion of hybrids and electric vehicles.

PROCESS GOING FORWARD: 2009 to 2012

Cabinet has mandated a clear path for the future. Milestones will include a national summit in February next year, the conclusion of international negotiations at the end of 2009 and a final domestic policy to be adopted by the end of 2010 after international negotiations have been completed.

The process will culminate in the introduction of a legislative, regulatory and fiscal package to give effect to the strategic direction and policy from now up to 2012.

Click here for the PowerPoint presentation of the Media Statement.

Enquiries to:
Ronel Bester Mobile: 083-242-7763 E-mail: rbester@deat.gov.za

A rose is a rose is a rose -- or is it?

Africa Expat Wives Club: "The Telegraph newspaper yesterday published that the British International Development Secretary, Douglas Alexander, made a statement appealing to romantics to buy Kenyan stems for Valentines Day. Excellent, I thought – until I read on to learn that he was immediately challenged by critics who said surely shoppers should be buying local or organic, or not buying roses at all as they are not in season in Britain. Grrr. I’m pretty sure I do understand the arguments about food miles and carbon footprints but I can’t help still feeling totally unconvinced about boycotting Kenyan produce."

Africa Expat Wives Club: Buy a Kenyan Valentines Rose!

Carbon trading a scam: The Antidote

The Antidote: "Durban-based activist/academic Patrick Bond makes a very convincing argument against carbon trading, the mechanism meant to mitigate industrial carbon dioxide emissions (for a great intro to the subject, check-out this urban sprout post).

Bond agrees with Vandana Shiva that “the right to pollute is a multitrillion dollar giveaway to the people who caused the bulk of the climate problems” in the first place."