The ongoing disagreement about whether biofuels were effecting food availability, which 2nd generation biofuels offered most, whether wind farms polluted, if nuclear was a better option etc have become somewhat less significant.

Now the economy is the unarguable brake on the development and implementation of alternate energies.

The economic downturn has forced the price of oil down which ends all investors and investees scrambling to the spreadsheet. It has further reduced the availability of capital in those cases where the venture capitalist is still interested in investing. The billions of dollars, euros etc of capital pumped into the banks to keep them afloat will inevitably lead to less money to be invested in subsidising alternate energy and probably more worrying into R&D.

The alternate energy movement runs the risk of faltering and again loosing momentum as it did after the fuel crisis in the 1980s.

This is the full text, you’ll need to go to EcoWordly if you need references.

“South Africa, recently dogged by electricity shortages at the state-run generator (Eskom), is innovating strongly in the energy sector. I will be discussing examples of this innovation in future posts, but now for the first of several reports on newsworthy energy related events in South Africa.

South African Solar Challenge 2008

South Africa’s Department of Science and Technology (DST) was one of the supporters of the South African Solar Challenge 2008 solar car race, which ended at the Innovation Hub in Pretoria this week. Solar car races are by no means new, but this is the first time one has been run in South Africa. The race, which was noted in a recent post on solar cars, was organized by the Advanced Energy Foundation.

The 5 finishers of the 4,175 km trip from Johannesburg through Cape Town, the Garden Route, Durban, Van Reenen and Ermelo back to Pretoria represented a range of solutions from the aerodynamically beautiful Falcon, through the simple and tough Team Suna car to a hydrogen fuel cell powered scooter from Malaysia. The race was won by the Falcon from Tokai University in Japan.

No matter who won, the race succeeded in stimulating interest in solar technology and developing science skills. However, it was clearly only a small step forward. The final number of entrants was pared down from the planned 40 to only 6, of which 5 “finished” the race. The distance and climate extremes encountered by the teams posed significant tests for the cars. Furthermore, it does not immediately address the poor utilisation of solar energy in South Africa, noted in a previous post.”

I have started writing posts for and environment focussed blog called EcoWorldly.

EcoWorldly brings you news on sustainable successes and ecological failures in other countries that offer lessons for green progress in America. Find perspectives and news on the environmental movement from around the world.

I will be putting links to these posts along with the total text here – otherwise you could visit the site or subscribe in your newsreader.

So at last I had my iPhone, connect it and start the process. But no, I have to upload the latest phone software while connected to iTunes.

But I am in South Africa and that’s not as easy as it sounds – three partial downloads and six hours later I’m online!

Discriminating against South Africans again?

More later…….

Now that South Africa at least has an Apps Store we were getting excited BUT there is no games category and searching for games that exist on other country’s sites shows the apps don’t exist on the Apple’s South African site!

Yes here it is Apple’s South African website promoting the purchase of music using iTunes BUT there is no music for sale through Apple in South Africa!

Once again we seem to be overlooked in South Africa.

Freegans are anti-consumerist individuals employ alternative living strategies based on “limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources.

Amongst other they salvage discarded but unspoiled food that has passed its best by date, as a political statement not because they are poor or homeless.

This seems a very weird and almost humourous concept, but this site used it to link to the major food wastage problem in the UK.

Some quotable extracts from this webpage:

• “It is estimated that one third of all waste going to landfill comes from the food sector, and one quarter of this could have been consumed.”

• “It showed that UK consumers are throwing away a total of £10bn worth of food each year. It said that the widespread concern about soaring food prices “sits awkwardly” alongside proof that consumers dispose of 6.7m tonnes of food waste each year, 4.1m tonnes of which could have been eaten. This equates to £420 per household every year.”
• “Redistribution schemes such as FareShare can help reduce the 1.6m tonnes coming from retailers. This UK charity offers tailored solutions to the food industry by taking companies’ surplus and waste and distributing the edible food through a community network of over 500 organisations that help disadvantaged people.
  Last year, FareShare helped save 2,000 tonnes of edible food from landfill, providing meals for 3.3m people. This in turn meant 13,000 tonnes less carbon dioxide was emitted into the environment.”

Some of our previous posts linked to food waste:

WASTE – Food, Energy, Water & Time
Mali’s Mangos
One Million Tubs of Yoghurt
Biofuels From Waste

If you search the blog you will see that drying is the frequent subject of posts. This is because it is an effective and simple preservation technology that can (depending on the process used) be implemented with little or no capital investment.

Given the dual problem of food shortages and soaring energy costs, it seems that now would be a good time for extension and project officers to be focussing on sun and solar drying. I am thinking of preparing a post and webpage that will try and present a practical linked decision tree for sun and solar drying.

In the mean time this article on the FAO website is extremely useful.

The article has its origins in work done in Uganda on a simple cabinet dryer. This first article in a series focuses on the approach an entrepreneur would take to evaluate the potential of entering the dried fruit business.

Detailed costs and calculations are supplied. These need to be adjusted for the entrepreneurs local conditions and costs especially as this new summary document is undated and the original work was done in the 70s. However, the process outlined, checklists and calculation methods are all very useful.

The article supplies sufficient technical information to be able to do the evaluation but not enough to build a dryer and start drying. This is the subject of additional articles.

The information provided and the people involved are linked to the export of dried pineapple, mango and banana to Europe which was very successfully introduced on a large scale in Uganda. An interesting warning in the article is that the local selling price is normally 2 to 6 times lower than the export price.

The more I read the blogs and listed to the podcasts the more I get confused. This writing and talk of machining the body out of a single block of aluminium is just not possible and anyway how would one get the stuff into it. But nobody stops and corrects the error – am I just too finicky?

The thing to the left is the part that was machined out of aluminum – you can see this in the video on the site.

Now what is obviously necessary is the “tray” of the computer. This is confirmed by omission on the site just below the above picture, where it is stated

So it seems like the things I read and listened to didn’t pick this up – I also heard nothing about the lack of a firewire port?

So let me know – am I just nitpicking?

I came across this the other day. While I can agree with the basis that it now time for a better Africa I have not been able to understand what this is really about.

I’m actually not too dumb, but don’t get it – I can only wonder if its just Africa’s traditional way of talking and talking and talking wrapped up in a nice Web2.0 format? At least it doesn’t cost that much!

Who can help me to understand?