Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe has noted plans for a new diesel manufacturing plant in the Free State.

The Department of Energy has received an application for a manufacturing facility which will make diesel from disused tyres. The facility will be based in the province.

Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs Buyelwa Sonjica officially opened Mpumalanga's first district water quality laboratory in Ermelo in the Gert Sibande district on Friday.

During the launch, Sonjica said it was important that South Africa looked after its rivers because any degrading of rivers affected its neighbours as well.

Glass packaging company Nampak Wiegand Glass has launched its new R160-million waste glass, or cullet, processing plant.

The facility uses innovative technology and equipment from Austrian international glass innovation specialist company Binder&Co and is expected to meet all its processing and supply needs in the future.

President Jacob Zuma has called on South Africans to save energy in an effort to avoid the load-shedding that plunged the country into darkness in 2007 and 2008.

In its efforts to save the limited resource, Government is embarking on an initiative to implement the use of alternative forms of energy - cheaper and cleaner forms which saves money and the environment.

Scan Display powered its exhibition stand at the recent Meetings Africa show with certified green power, using the Renewable Energy Certificate system. This is the first time that an individual exhibitor has used renewable energy for its stand’s lighting and electrical appliances.

Certified green power - The Renewable Energy Certificate (REC) system can be difficult to grasp. It means that, while Scan used the Sandton Convention Centre’s energy supply on its stand at the show, it bought the equivalent certified green power from a company trading renewable energy certificates. This resulted in Scan Display indirectly supporting a green power source – in this case a solar photovoltaic generator in Northern Kwazulu Natal – and having zero electricity related carbon emissions.

Pretoria - Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs, Buyelwa Sonjica, has launched a state-of-the-art weather radar network that will see the prediction of and warnings about severe weather become more accurate.

Government has granted the South African Weather Service R240 million for infrastructure investment to upgrade and replace its over 30-year-old radar systems to bring about a substantially improved weather observation network that meets contemporary needs.

The new weather radars will play a vital role in enhancing adaptation tools and products such as the Severe Weather Forecast project and the Flash Flood Guidance System that minimise loss of life and damage to property. The radar network consists of 12 new Doppler weather radars.

Press Release: As a semi-finalist in the eta awards in the Innovation Category, the Green Ceiling Heater figuratively makes money fall from your ceiling, says inventor, Kobus Engelbrecht, Managing Director of African Technical Innovations.

“The concept arose out of the fact that in South Africa’s climate we take great care to insulate our ceilings, primarily to keep the heat out in summer but also to keep the heat in during winter.  What happens though is that in winter our roofs are essentially a large solar panel and the air in the ceiling space heats up, but as a result of the insulation, it stays there!  This did not make any sense to me at all. That we spend a lot of money on gas and electric heating during winter, but that we have this trapped energy literally sitting in our ceilings going to waste!

SAB Miller, South African grown, second largest brewer in the world has introduced anaerobic digestion to treat the waste leaving its Alrode Brewery in Gauteng, South Africa. Anaerobic fermentation of organic material produces methane, which is used to reduce the consumption of fossil fuel based energy.

Copper brewhouse in a Trappist brewery
Brewery Waste & Biogas
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.

There is sufficient availability of renewable energy sources to fulfil the world's need for electrical power. This was the consensus among speakers at the the International Solar Energy Society's (ISES) Solar World Congress.  They held that the technology, for the conversion of the various sources of renewable energy to electricity, is mature enough to implement.

Eskom, the South African state owned electricity generator, recently announced that it has budgeted a billion dollars over the next ten years for a demonstration and pilot concentrated solar power (CSP) plant. However, moving from budget to implementation is proving more difficult!

Why Concentrated Solar Power

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.

This positive report on the opportunities for Renewable Energy in South Africa is a starting point for a series of posts that will report on developments in and linked to the use of Renewable Energy in South Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Where is Renewable Energy Going in South Africa?

An almost ten fold growth in revenue from renewable energy is predicted by business research and consulting firm Frost and Sullivan’s. This emerges from their Southern African Renewable Energy Equipment Market analysis, which sees the current renewable industry in South Africa having revenues of only $28.4 million in 2008 but projects a growth to over $250 million by 2015.

The biotechnology industry must be developed in South Africa and the region, to ensure the advancement of therapies for HIV and AIDS, Tuberculosis and other diseases, says Science and Technology Minister Naledi Pandor.

"This is a sector that we have to build and grow. We want to make South Africa one of the top 10 nations in the world in terms of the pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, flavour, fragrance and biopesticide industries by 2018," said the minister.

Speaking at the National Biotechnology Workshop in Pretoria on Thursday, Ms Pandor said the heavy burden of disease in southern Africa created the need for added impetus in searching for biotechnology solutions.