How Africa’s mobile phones are fuelling climate change

There has been tremendous growth in the African telecoms story that quite frankly a lot of people did not see coming. Due to strong economic growth and fierce competition between telecom operators that keep prices relatively low, the African mobile market has only one way to go and that is up.

Now telecom companies needs base stations to support their network and that is where the problem lies. In developed countries the base stations are just connected to the power grid and that’s it. In Africa, most communities are without electricity so the telecom companies have to rely on generators running on diesel.

Most of Africa’s base stations are off grid     (Photo by Pptudela)

In Nigeria for instance  which has currently over 100 million subscribers and is expected to have 169 million subscribers by 2017, telecoms companies are running two diesel generators around the clock to power their base stations.  There are currently over 15,000 base stations in the country and they use 25 million litres of diesel every month which is  enough to fill 10 olympic sized swimming pools.

With most base stations located in residential areas, there are several health implications that arise from the use of generators. Diesel fumes are carcinogenic and the generators are pretty noisy and there is the issue of carbon emissions.

The average carbon emissions from a litre of diesel is 713 grammes and 25 millions litres will produce roughly 17,825 tonnes of carbon dioxide a month. That is equal to the emissions produced by 3,495 cars.

The scary thing is that telecoms companies need more base stations to provide better services with Nigeria alone requiring about 75,000 base stations to  cater for a population of 160 million people. This practice is also carried out across Africa and will  result in one thing; higher carbon emissions.

There is however a way to stop this and I don’t mean taking away people’s  phones.

Several telecoms companies have been exploring the use of renewable energy sources like wind and solar but their intermittent  nature makes it difficult for them to act as stand alone power sources. The solution been pushed by operators like Flexenclosure is a hybrid system which used a combination of both solar and wind with either a battery or generator to provide back up power.

There have also been several biofuel trials which have met with limited success due to the misconceptions that came with feedstocks like jatropha but biofuels could still be used power base stations in rural regions. There have also been advances in base station design making them more energy-efficient and able to able to keep their equipment cooler in the high temperatures.

In addition to reducing their carbon footprint, One other reason (and the cynical part of me will say the most important reason) why operators are starting to explore renewable energy is the cost savings that will come from switching from diesel which is often stolen from the base stations. Hybrid systems have higher CAPEX but lower OPEX and the payback period is usually within 2 to 3 years.

Africa is set to become the biggest phone market in the world and operators are slowly starting to adapt to the power constraints facing them in the continent which is set to have 1 billion subscribers by 2015. If the Africa is to be kept relatively carbon free then telecoms operators will have to fully embrace renewable energy.

Dethroning Old King Coal

Mankind has done very well as a species. We have been to space, walked on the moon and discovered how to split the atom but we still depend on one of the oldest and dirtiest fossil fuels for energy.

It was reported that 1200 new coal plants are to be built with three – quarters of them to be located in China and India (no surprise there). Both China and India which are rising economic powerhouses with large populations to boot, have invested a lot in renewable technologies but have felt the need to return to the fossil fuel that has powered mankind for centuries.  Germany which is one of Europe’s brightest renewable energy stars has decided to phrase out its nuclear plants and replace them with coal.

Unlike Mitt Romney who during the first presidential debate declared his love for coal (despite saying coal plants kill people in 2003) I am not a fan of coal for a variety of reasons. The effects of coal mining on the environment are extremely damaging and coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel in terms of its carbon dioxide emissions. There is also the human risk involved with coal use as coal workers are prone to all kinds of respiratory diseases due to particulate and heavy metal exposure.

Coal mining effects on the environment can devastating         (Photo:Nitin Kirloskar)

So why then is coal making a very strong comeback despite fears by the UN that CO2 emissions are not being cut enough to stop climate change?

I guess the reasons why coal is still going strong are the same with why people are addicted to fast food.

1. Coal like most fast food is cheap and this is thanks to the global recession. The ongoing financial crisis has seen a fall in demand for products which results in reduced industrial activities. This then means that there is an oversupply of coal prompting governments to take advantage of this fact by building more coal plants.

2. Coal can be found almost everywhere. The same way you can find a fast food outlet with a five-minute walk in any direction is pretty much the same way you can find coal in almost any country. This limits the chances of a few countries controlling its price like OPEC does with crude oil.

3. Coal plants are cheaper and faster to build than nuclear power stations and most off-shore wind farms. You just pop them in a microwave for five minutes and voila, instant power. They are also more efficient than wind or solar which have to depend on site location to reduce intermittency issues.

A coal train in UK. Cheap prices have seen a resurgence in coal use (Photo:Callum Black)

A recent report by BP on the current energy reserves shows that our global coal reserves will last another 112 years compared to gas and oil which should last 63.6 years and 54.2 years respectively. This will mean that Old King Coal is going to be with us for quite a while.

So how do we deal with this situation?

The best way to live a healthy life is to cut out fast foods from your diet but in dire cases the next best thing is to make fast foods healthier. One way of doing this with coal is to avoid the use of lignite or brown coal which is the dirtiest of all coal (I guess it is like replacing vegetable oil with olive oil).

Another method which I am rooting for is called carbon capture and storage or CCS or short. This method takes all the carbon emissions from fossil fuel plants and pumps them into underground reservoirs. A rather interesting video about this technology can be seen below.

So what is the catch?

Well CCS  has not be commercial viable and is till very much in its infancy. Its use with coal plants would have led to extremely high electricity prices but advances in CCS technology has shown that power plants with CCS could compete with nuclear and renewables in the next decade.

Now since majority of the new coal plants are being constructed developing countries, it will make sense for them to be equipped with CCS. This might increase the operating costs of the power plant but this is likely to be offset by the cheap price of coal. I also believe that the best way of funding CCS advancement in developing nations is to have industrialized nations pay for them and used the carbon credits earned to offset their emissions. The UK has several CCS projects ongoing and has pledged £60 million to promote CCS in developing countries.

So sadly, coal like fast food is mankind’s energy guilty pleasure and just like fast food we need to find ways to make it healthier.

Frack the Promised Land: Matt Damon takes on Big Oil?

In December 2012 Matt Damon new flick “Promised Land” which is a drama about hydraulic fracturing will hit the cinemas in America but already the movie has come under attack from the oil lobby. The movie sees  Matt Damon playing a gas-company salesman trying to get citizens living in rural Pennsylvania to lease their lands to allow the fracking of shale deposits to release natural gas.

Promised Land is directed by the acclaimed director Gus Van Sant who has been twice Oscar nominated for Best Director (Good Will Hunting and Milk) and has a script written by John Krasinski and Matt Damon (who wrote, stared and wrote an Oscar for Goodwill Hunting). 

And this might be the reason why Big Oil is ticked off.

This is not the first movie to have environmental degradation as a theme in recent years. There was the award-winning smash hit documentary  An inconvenient Truth by Al Gore which highlighted the effects of climate change and we also have smaller but critical acclaimed documentaries like Age of Stupid and Gasland. Gasland in particular focused on the effects of fracking on local communities while Age of Stupid gave screen time to the oil pollution experienced in the Nigerian Niger-Delta region.

Theatrical poster with British legend Pete Postlethwaite (Spanner Films)

The Oil Industry as expected launched a series of attacks disproving the validity of the claims made by each movie with the Independent Petroleum Association of America establishing the Energy in Depth (EiD) campaign which aims to promote the benefits of fracking and has released Truthland to debunk the claims made by the Josh Fox who directed Gasland while the human contribution to climate change which featured in both An Inconvenient Truth and Age of Stupid have attacked by climate sceptics as being a myth.

In the case of Promised Land, the Independent Petroleum Association Of America and other energy companies have declared that they will launch a PR campaign  that will be “provid(ing) film reviewers with scientific studies, distribute leaflets to moviegoers and launching a “truth squad” initiative on Twitter and Facebook.”

The question one could ask is why is the Oil Lobby so scared of the arrival of Promised Land?

The answer is twofold: money and star power.

Like I mentioned earlier there have been several movies with environmental themes but their budgets have been relatively small. Promised Land has a budget of $15 million which is small by Hollywood standards but An Inconvenient Truth had a budget of $1 million while Age of Stupid producers turned to crowdfunding to finance their movie.

Now it’s a fact that the larger the budget, the more resources that will be spent in advertising. This will lead to more people seeing the movie and forming their opinions on what they have seen which will most likely be that fracking is bad.

The second reason why Big Oil is scared is because of the movie cast. Matt Damon is seen as a good guy in Hollywood who supports a variety of environmental and human right issues. He is also a very talented actor and scriptwriter so it will not be a shock to expect Promised Land to be nominated for an Oscar in 2013 and this will be the worst kind of publicity that fracking proponents will need.

 

Japan and the “N” word

There are few topics that are as divisive as the use of nuclear energy. One mention of the dreaded “N” word in a clean energy summit is likely to see a line drawn in the sand and angry words tossed back and forth. Critics of nuclear energy with often cite safety issues and they point to accidents like Chernobyl and recently the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster and there is also the difficulty involved in disposing waste radioactive material.

Anti-nuclear protest in Japan

One recurring fear in this post 9/11 world is the risk of terrorists or rogue nations developing the tactical nuclear capabilities. One example is Iran whose nuclear research programme keeps many American politicians up at night. While the Iranians have repeatedly claimed that they are seeking to develop nuclear power for peacefully uses everyone else thinks they are trying to build their own nuclear bomb.

I however recently had a discussion with an environmentalist who totally supports nuclear power and claimed that it is one of the safest forms of energy.  He argued that there have only been three major nuclear incidents compared to the numerous oil spills and tonnes of carbon dioxide spewed by coal plants. There was also the argument that renewables are unlikely to be able to provide steady base load electricity due to their unreliable nature.

Japan decided after the Fukushima Daiichi incident to phrase nuclear power and many other nations followed suite. There was a great wave of anti-nuclear sentiment that swept the globe at that time with countries planning to phrase out nuclear plants and many proposed reactors put on hold. It would have been a safe bet to say that nuclear power was on its last legs.

Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda  recently ordered the reactivation of two nuclear reactors and once again this has been met with waves of protest  but the fact is that Japan depends on nuclear power of 18 percent of its electricity and is planning to start rolling blackouts in a bid to reduce power consumption.  Japanese citizens have called for a focus on renewable energy but this will take time to implement and will not be able to solve the present electricity shortage.  China has also stated plans to build more reactors although it will be a much smaller number than the original idea to build a hundred reactors.

The restart of the reactors coincides with the release of a report by the Japanese parliamentary panel that labelled the accident a “Made in Japan” disaster. The report cites poor organisational structure and failure to follow regulations as key factors behind the disaster. The panel also points fingers at the government for failing to implement adequate emergency and evacuation procedures.  This will no doubt be pounced upon by nuclear proponents who can also pick apart the logic behind building the plant in an area that has up to 14 active fault lines.

So the question is “Do we need nuclear power?”

In a word “Yes”.

Mankind’s energy needs are expanding at a much faster rate that fossil fuels will be able to cope and in order to promote energy security, countries will seek to develop their nuclear capabilities and the truth is that nuclear power produces a lot of bang for your buck.  Renewables are great but in their current form will not be able to sustain our needs but as technologies improve this equation could change. The trick will be allowing us to increase funding for renewables in order to wean mankind off nuclear power. Also countries will abundant natural gas reserves like Nigeria should avoid going down the nuclear route and instead explore carbon capture and storage technologies in order to trap their carbon emissions. Nuclear power is out and cannot be put back in Pandora ’s Box but we try to tame this beast and hopefully make it less menacing.

Rio+ 20: A Beautiful Failure

In 1992 World leaders realized that the planet was on a dangerous path and they gathered in Rio to discuss current trends in climate change and environmental degradation. The result of this meeting was the birth of Agenda 21 which is an action plan that highlighted how sustainable development should be implemented by governments and the UN.

Fast forward twenty years later carbon emissions along with deforestation levels have risen and there is the issue of catering to 6 billion people with dwindling resources and the bleak prospect for this number increasing to 7 billion by 2025. Agenda 21 was tossed out the window as developing nations strive towards economic growth using the same destructive template inherited from the industrialised nations

The recently concluded Rio+ 20 summit was noticeable by the absence of prominent G20 leaders. Obama, Cameron and Merkel all stay away and the sad fact is without them any meaningful progress on how to counter climate change cannot be reached. French President Francois Hollande made an appearance and bless him for it but the cynic in me can help but wonder it the summit was not just another photo opportunity. The 1992 Earth summit was attended by 108 heads of state but Rio+ 20 saw this number reduced to 70.

For four days delegates from several countries argued and passed the buck with developing nations blaming the west for the sorry state the planet is in while the industrialised nations point fingers at new economic powerhouses like China and India whose carbon emissions have risen sharply. Matters could not be worse with the eurozone and indeed the world in dire financial straits and sadly the economy beats environment everytime.

While the 1992 Rio summit  gave birth to several documents and agreements including The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) which sets out to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations, Rio+ 20 produced a draft document without any time tables or solid commitments on how to solve the problems presented at the summit.

Rio+ 20 concluded with lots of hand wrangling and empty promises which pretty much sums up the way other recent environmental summits ended. While everyone realizes that we have a serious problem the interest and urgency to seek solutions seems to have waned. Rio+ 20 could have been a solid addition to it’s 1992 forerunner but in the end it was a spectacular letdown.