Durban - Electric cars that run on magnetic cables buried under the N3. Windows that automatically regulate sunshine levels to cool down or heat up buildings.
New batteries that store massive volumes of electricity and “self-healing” materials that mimic the ability of living organisms to repair tissue damage.
These are some of the emerging innovations that could help South Africa move into the global “green technologies” era, according to a new government-funded study by the Academy of Science of South Africa.
The year-long academy study on the state of green technologies finds that despite some good early progress, the development of new energy-efficient and environmentally sustainable technology is still hampered by a lack of political will, incoherent policy and government bureaucracy.
Compared to the top 10 green technology leaders around the world, “South Africa has been slow to develop and adopt green technologies, despite much enabling legislation”, says the report written by a panel of experts chaired by Professor Eugene Cloete, of Stellenbosch University. It was released in Joburg this week. Perhaps one of the biggest opportunities still to be grasped, they say, is South Africa’s massive solar energy potential.
“This country has amongst the best solar energy resources in the world – abundant sunshine, low precipitation (rainfall) and vast tracts of unused land. The greatest potential is in the western and north-western parts of the country. However, to date, relatively little has been exploited,” the study says.
The study says South Africa – with about 280 trillion watts of solar energy potential – could position itself as a leading global player in the emerging concentrated solar power market. Concentrated solar power is a technology that harnesses solar radiation to produce high temperatures using heat-transfer fluids.
The energy sector, responsible for almost 80% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, is a prime target for the introduction of green technology innovation.
The report notes that Germany is planning to phase out all of its remaining nuclear stations by 2022 and now derives more than 20% of its electricity from renewable energy.
The report says South Africa needs to take “urgent steps” to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions if it hopes to honour targets announced by President Jacob Zuma at the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009.
South Africa also lags behind many industrialised nations in recycling waste. At a time when several European nations have reduced the quantity of waste sent to landfill to below 25%, almost 90% of all general and hazardous waste in South Africa still ends up in landfills.
A move to a circular, recycling economy should include the human and animal sewage sector for use in crop fertilisers.
It also makes little sense for South Africa to continue using conventional flush toilets, with more potable water flushed away into sewers than used for drinking.
Other potential green tech opportunities that should be examined include mining rare earth elements such as ytterbium, samarium, erbium or holmium.
South Africa had been the world leader in rare earth elements production in the 1950s but had been overtaken by China that now produced 97% of rare earths.
There are also major opportunities for the building sector to adopt green technology. Emerging examples include electrochromic windows that change the shade of the windows depending on the exterior-interior temperature difference.
In the transport sector, possible game-changers include next-generation electric vehicles that receive power remotely from an electromagnetic field produced by cables under the road.
* See www.assaf.org.za
The Mercury