An Energy Revolution: Micro-Hydro Power

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Pat Downey lives in the tiny little town of Hofmeyer, South Africa. This little town on the edge of the great Karoo Desert seems like an unlikely place for one of Africa's most innovative water engineers to live. There is a small general store, a gas station where you have to wake up the attendant, and surprisingly, a lot of rushing water in the Fish River, used to irrigate the dry farmland scattered around the desert hills.

Downey is a gentle, unassuming man, with the language of an inventor and a slightly stooped gate. Since the 1970s he has been pioneering technology that generates electrical power from small water-driven turbines. These turbines do not need a dam to build up water pressure, but rather they divert a small part of a river and harvest electricity from the kinetic energy generated by a small drop in height.

Water is a storehouse of kinetic energy. The hydrological cycle that lifts water out of the oceans and off the land through evaporation is run on solar energy. The sun heats the water and the air, evaporation occurs and the kinetic energy from this process is stored in the water. Then the water, full of energy, falls on distant mountains high up, and runs down rivers to the sea, all the while giving up that energy as splashing waterfalls and crashing rapids. Every gorgeous waterfall is a massive release of stored kinetic energy.

For a large-scale hydro-electric dam, those gorgeous waterfalls are flooded by a big lake, the stored water is backed up into a stunning gorge that will forever be lost to admiring eyes. Not so with micro-hydro systems like the ones Downey makes.

These smalls systems divert a small amount of water around the waterfall. Generally less than 1% of the total flow. The water falls through a pipe, spins a small turbine, and is dropped into the little pool at the base of the waterfall. For an average sized river like the Fish, a little fifteen foot (4m) drop can generate enough electrical power for fifty low-cost houses.

Small hydro systems like this can survive floods, they have a very small impact on the environment, they never silt up, and they can operate for as long as they are maintained, unlike massive dams which fill up with sediment and become useless over the years.

So why are they not more widespread?
Electricity in South Africa has been kept at an artificially low price for decades. The country sought to spur investment and growth with electricity subsidies to farmers and towns. Downey tried to sell these systems, but their initial cost was just too high. That has changed now. The national electrical grid has had to become profitable, and to do that they have had to raise prices by a whopping 140% in the last three years.

Correspondingly the demand for his systems has gone through the roof. At today's prices, the systems pay for themselves in three to four years. Today he cannot keep up with all the orders, "the emails just come flooding in, we can't keep up!" He explains in his wavering excited voice.

For a man who struggled and worked for years in obscurity, waiting for just this moment, he is clearly enjoying every moment of it.

Accessorizing Sustainability- An Economic Model for Forest Conservation

Cutting raw Palpretto logs from a sustainably managed forest. Every tiny piece of these logs will be used for something.


Small offcuts after the logs have been processed.



Turning the offcuts into small cosmetic jars


American model and activist Summer Rayn Oaks showing off the finished jars filled with sustainably harvested forest oils for skin care, made by subsidiary Bom Oils of Mozambique.


I have just returned from another trip to Mezimbite Forest Center, a project run by Ashoka Fellow Allan Schwarz. Schwarz has been pioneering projects around the city of Beira, Mozambique from his small replanted forest grove. The area has been hard hit by deforestation for the energy trade. Most of it has fallen for charcoal, to power the stoves of the rapidly growing urban population. This area is not unique. Throughout Africa, as I have mentioned in previous posts, there is a massive problem with deforestation.


Cosmetic jars for the Bom products, like lip balm, all made from wood offcuts from forests that are managed sustainably.

Charcoal is the main form of energy for most rural and urban households, and this has driven the continuing destruction of the forests. As the forests "run away" the cost of getting the charcoal into the cities rises, and the cost of charcoal goes up, making it more lucrative to cut the trees. It is an energy cycle that is completely un-sustainable, since virtually no one is replanting the forests. No one except for a few individuals like Schwarz.

He runs the biggest network of nurseries in the region which have been used to replant forests under his care. He pays for this by carefully removing certain trees from these well-managed forests and employing former charcoal cutters to be trained as skilled wood turners. Communities then see a greater value in their forests than making charcoal and have managed to keep some of them standing.


Tables for the European Market

One aspect of Schwarz's operation is value adding along the supply chain. Instead of selling this sustainable wood harvest at a premium, he has a working mill that employs between forty and a hundred people at any one time.

Every tiny little scrap of wood is used for something, from crochet needles for the eastern market, make-up compacts for American women, to bangles and jewelry for the French. A tree that falls for charcoal will end up being valued at roughly $1.50 for the end product of charcoal, and only 25 US cents for the cutters. With Schwarz's model however, a single tree may net thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars, with that money equitably distributed to communities, workers and crafts-people. A craftsman at his facility earns about 250$ a month, more than twenty-times the average income in Mozambique.


Knitting needles made from wood offcuts at the Mezimbite Forest Center

Value adding at a local level is driving projects like this around the world. Schwarz believes that only by including local communities in this value chain can he create awareness that forests are more economically productive as a healthy system than as charcoal. Communities are the only guardians of their forest resources, but they must benefit directly, and in Mezimbite they are included as an important part of an economic system that puts special products in the hands of environmentally aware consumers.

Far from being clunky symbols of green, the art he and his team creates is sleek, gorgeous and just happens to make the world a better place. Go to his website, or the AD Schwarz design site and explore some his designs. This award winning designer, architect and forester has created a model of sustainable design that symbolises the finest of African conservation and craftsmanship.

Homegrown Wind Power For Africa

What is an appropriate technology transfer from the western world for African villages? The answer, as Bob Dylan suggests, is blowing in the wind, at least on the Mozambiquan coastline. Jason Morenikeji explains in this short film.





These are big ideas, and they deserve a good hearing. The film I created is short but there is scope here for a much larger conversation (and a longer film- anyone interested to help?) about cross-platform sharing and sustainable power solutions that are not only in the bush but atop our apartments, houses, and even cars.

Jason, who is here in Johannesburg for an investors conference, suggests that power solutions, offered by companies like his, should be comprehensive and utilizing all available forms of generation. No wind? Use your solar panels. Stormy day? use the wind. As a back up for important medical equipment or in case of an emergency, have a basic diesel generator that can be turned on. In some sites, near hills or mountains, it is possible to put a small hydroelectric generator in as well.

These are not pie-in the sky technologies. As Jason shows us in the video these things are being crafted using local resources and skills even in the most back-water places of the world. A local pilot project using a hybrid system of wind and solar can pay back the cost of the system in saved diesel fuel in eighteen short months. Far from being over-priced or too complicated to maintain, these are the systems of the future, investors take note.

Creating A Sustainable Energy Future For Africa

Today in Africa there are many people working to make a difference and create a future for the continent that is based on sustainable energy and resource conservation. These dedicated individuals are battling against artificially low energy costs, red tape, and the continuing degradation of lands and resources. Many times their battles are private, and their successes unknown and uncelebrated by any but a small group directly surrounding the projects. But these small kernels of hope have within them a profound ability to affect change in a positive way in Africa and the rest of the world.

Energy in Africa is derived from burning trees, a whopping 91% of the continent gets it's energy in this way. Deforestation is rife, with some countries losing 5 to 7 percent of their trees every year, and its getting worse. This is a loss to everyone on planet Earth, since our oxygen and carbon dioxide know no borders. When forests are destroyed, so are all the animals and rainfall systems that depend on them. In African's search for energy to cook their meals the destruction of her environment is sown. When the trees are gone, rainfall drops, crops whither and die, and more pressure is put on the few intact ecosystems and forests. Any project that seeks to address this spiraling devastation is worth investigating and sharing. Some stand out as examples of "best practice", and I am following these projects and the people behind them in order to share what makes them so successful.

In Johannesburg, the South African company Sunfire Solutions has developed a solar plan: to get out into Africa and distribute solar cookers. If you think these machines are too clumsy, too difficult to use, or hard to set up and maintain, wake up to Africa's energy future and watch this short movie.



These stoves do have problems, the most pressing is their cost. To address this issue, Sunfire Solutions has developed a business model that utilizes private donations, non-governmental organization's (NGO) funding, carbon trading and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs. Each stove can directly stop eleven tons of CO2 going into the air each year, as well as remove more CO2 from the air by preventing the destruction of Africa's woodlands.

Another problem is their distribution. Crosby Menzies, the Director of Sunfire Solutions is putting together a team to take their solar cookers on the road, traveling from South Africa, to Mozambique then on to Zimbabwe and maybe Malawi. Already they have been distributing their cookers in the Luangwa Valley in Zambia, and have had a great response. A video piece by Tina Stollard is up on their Youtube channel. Along the way they will stop at small and large communities, showing how to use the stoves and distributing as many as they can. They also hope to make contact with NGOs and small businesses in the areas they visit, leaving behind a distribution system that works for the long term.

As a small part of the change that is happening in Africa, Menzies is passionate about what they are doing. He has wagered his own financial future on the success of solar cookers in Africa, and believes that the change he is helping to bring about is vital to the future of the continent.

Traveling around Africa for the last three months working on a Multimedia series with Global Post called Energy Entrepreneurs has opened my eyes to the incredible potential and possibilities that exist here for people with drive, vision and hope. They should be an example to all of us to be the change we most want to see in the world.

The Wild Wet Wilderness of Mozambique

Snorkeling through the coral reefs of the Quirimbas Archipeligo

I have been spending the last three weeks in the far northeast of Mozambique. This is the Cabo del Gado province, and it is here that some of the last remaing wilderness areas in Africa can be found. Pemba is the capital city, and at the moment it is best known for its pristine white beaches, the new Quirimbas National Park with dozens of coral islands boasting an amazming varirty of wildlife. Dugangs or Sea Cows, much like the Manitee, live in inland mangrove swamps and bays, ducking among the brachiated coral. Humpback whales come here at this time of the year to breed, and from the top of the lighthouse on nearby Goa Island I watched a pod breaching high into the sky and cavorting in the waves. But there is a dark cloud on this clear blue horizon, more than one.

Here there has just been an announcement by US oil company Anadarko of a discovery of oil and natural gas offshore. Already the Texas swagger can be seen at local resteraunts along with trucks full of military guards driving through the old portuguese town with oil workers under armed guard, ostensibly to deter piracy and kidnapping - two problems which have never been a real problem in sleepy Pemba before. The dark shadow of the BP oil spill has not even entered the debate of whether drilling for oil in this island paradise is a good thing or not. It seems to be a foregone conclusion that it will happen, and the lack of debate about it makes it even more worrying, since the size of the oil deposites may be huge and a cash boon for one of the ten least developed countries in the world. But there is little evidence to suggest that oil money would ever reach the population. Other African countries like Angola and Nigeria that rake in trillions of dollars remain some of the most desperate places to live in the world.

But inland there is also a problem. The new Quirimbas National Park and Niassa Game Reserve are being shot out by poachers. There seems to be collusion or at least aquiescence by the local authorities, who have done less than nothing to stem the flow of illegal elephant ivory from these shores. North of Pemba elephants used to surf in the azure waters, but they have not been seen for four years. Reliable reports suggest that poachers have adopted a more deadly approach to their trade: using rat poison on the beasts' watering holes. A crate of ivory from here that reached Singapore seems to support this idea. Tiny tusks the size of a man's finger were found, suggesting they even hacked them from the very young animals.

Private lodge owners are banding together to fight the poachers with little official support. They have about twenty five private guards and a helicopter, but this is far from adequate, and they are urgently appealing for greater support from the Mozambiquan government and the internationalcommunity. At least two hundred rangers are needed to make any impact on this lethal trade, where every day the pochers are emboldened and the numbers of elephants diminish. Links between the poachers, local businesses, arms smugglers and drug dealers are discussed at length around lodges and bars.

Trees are being felled all over the region. For twelve kilomteres oustide of Pemba there are just wood mills, sawing up the downed hardwood trees and exporting them to the far east, mostly to China. Export permits are a joke and can be bought from corrupt officials. Much of the expensive mahogany wood is already gone, but much also remains that could still be saved. This blog has touched many times on African deforestion issues, but here there is still a chance to stop the majority of the wood loss and choose a different path than the rest of the continent.

Pemba is one of the last frontier towns in southern Africa. Until recently it was isolated -a forgotten town at the dead end of thousand mile road, with no link to nearby Tanzania. But this has changed. In May 2010, a new bridge over the Rovuma River linked the two countries for the first time ever, and trade goods, cars, tourists and local people are flowing back and forth. Development is happening, and it will be up to the people of Cabo Del Gado Province to decide what the future of this incredible wilderness will look like.

Good News

After a busy trip to Durban, on South Africa's Indian Ocean shore last week, I am taking stock of some of the news in the world. The story I was pursuing is about alternative energy, for a Global Post series called Energy Entrepreneurs.



It's a fascinating world-wide look at incredible possibilities for the future of energy production that any consumer or energy producer would do well to read. Utilizing Global Post's unrivaled group of videographers, the news site has profiled solar energy projects in Guatemala, household geothermal systems in Palenstine, and many other surprising projects that create a sense of how humanity will power itself in the post-oil period. Coming at a time of deep disillusionment with oil in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico, these are profiles we should all be inspired by.

Pollution Oversight:
The New York Times reports that the Environmental Protection Agency in the US is investigating chemical fracturing's impact on ground water quality throughout the country. In Colorado, beautiful valleys like the Grand have been besmirched with thousands of gas wells, and one of the country's most important waterways, the Colorado River has had millions of tons of waste water from this process dumped into it. Hard questions have not been answered by gas companies like Haliburton and others about the ingredients in their hydraulic fracturing solutions, and from this perspective of a Colorado native, this is clearly unacceptable. Unlikely coalitions between environmentalists and farmers are driving a rethink on the wholesale drilling on our private and public lands, and the federal government should take heed. Anything that gets former adversaries like farmers and environmentalists into bed together should worry gas drilling companies that have again and again chosen profit and secrecy over disclosure and open discussion. Under the Bush administration these companies had free reign, but it seems those days may over. Groundwater belongs to everyone, and if these companies have endangered our future heath and that of our children, no amount of domestic gas production will make up for that.

Options
The Chevy Volt and the Nissan Leaf both go on sale this year. Almost the first fully electric cars that are available to all Americans, they represent the future of motoring throughout the world and the end of the cosy relationship between oil companies and automakers. They also represent a sea-change in attitude that will drive innovation and creation of new options that will move the United States towards greater reliance on all sorts of different types of energy. The cars are the rallying cry of the legions who have been held prisoner by oil. The Volt cares not if it is charged from a solar array, a nuclear power station, or methane power generation from rubbish.

This brings me back to my trip to Durban. This coastal city is a world leader in landfill waste. They create specially designed landfills that take advantage of the fact that landfills generate thousands of tons of the global warming gas Methane. Methane is 21 times more powerful a greenhouse gas as Carbon Dioxide. Every landfill in the world produces methane as a by-product of the breakdown of waste. In Durban they collect this waste gas, pipe it into massive engines and generate enough power to run more than five thousand city homes. In a city of millions, this is a pittance, but the technology is cheap enough to implement anywhere and by preventing noxious gases from escaping, and using them to supplant the dirty coal power that South Africa relies upon, the project is highly successful and self-supporting. In their final coup, Durban turns the old landfills into indigenous gardens and parks that beautify this hilly city by the sea.

African Odyssee- The Pans of Botswana

Mystical Khubu Island. The former king used to sit at the top of this granite spire, looking out over the Makgadikgadi Pans.


The Makgadikgadi Pans



View of Khubu Island

It may come as some surprise, but the winter in the desert wastes of Botswana is not a hot time. Dry, yes, barren, certainly, but not hot. Last night it was freezing cold on the Makgadikgadi pans, and the chilly wind tore through my glacier jacket as if it had come off the highlands of Greenland. We camped on the edge of the Pan, the Hog (My Toyota Truck) parked on the former grassy banks of this inland sea so that we could roll it down onto the flat salt plain in the morning to start it.

These and the Nxai Pans used to be an inland lake a hundred feet deep, but climate change and tectonic plate movement drained the pans thousands of years ago. Now they are a vast inland sea of salt and odd prickly grasses, that is about as empty as places can ever be, except where water still gathers. Water attracts animals of all types, and at night the sounds of lilting jackals mix with lion grunts, hyeana laughter and all sorts of screams and chortles, carrying across the pans for miles.


The Photojournalist in the Pans

Driving is treacherous and not recommended except on marked tracks. Without rain parts of the pans carry the prints of cars for decades after they zoomed past. The salt hides a primordial ooze beneath it's crust that can be deep enough in places to swallow a truck whole.

Climate change is writ large here, and although this particular type of climate change is from our far distant past and not linked to human causes, it is a dry and withering example of what parts of our planet could look like when our climate changes. Trees are only found on the former banks of the lake, undulating in the distance and levitating off the ground with the mirage as the cool still air of the day mixes with the hot reflected sunlight.

People lived here, and still do. Outside of the protected areas of the pans, which is most places, there are cattle and sheep farms, and more and more trees are going the way of the ax. Botswana is richer than most countries in Africa, and its obvious that barbed wire has become very useful to the people here. Nevertheless its possible to blast out on a track into the these vast wastes and get as lost as your are willing to be. Lost is realtive term here, where tracks lead kind of everywhere, and a simple compass is enough to make sure that you head in the right direction.

The last night in the pans we visited Khubu Island, a granite outcrop that has been home to Boababs, succulent trees, and groups of people throughout the pre-history of southern Africa. It has gained almost mythic proportations, with "have you been to Khubu Island?" the litmus test for a well travelled adventurer in Africa. It fell into a sorry and trashed state over the last decade, as uncontrolled tourism saw people dumping their rubbish here, but now it's possible for people to visit through the help of the local people, who benefit from travellers who stay at their modest and clean camp on the island, which depsite it's name is actually more of an isthmus out into the pans.

It is a fitting place to end our trip, sitting at the King's seat, high on a granite spire, watching the sun sink over the barren whiteness of the pans.

Clarity, self-awareness, personal growth, these are things many people seek when they travel, and in this place, surrounded by nothing, they all seem more attainable, -and the view is amazing.


Our last desert campsite in the Pans.