{"id":4396,"date":"2019-08-06T15:48:16","date_gmt":"2019-08-06T12:48:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=4396"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:27","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:27","slug":"africas-economic-growth-means-more-garbage-which-can-be-converted-to-energy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2019\/08\/06\/africas-economic-growth-means-more-garbage-which-can-be-converted-to-energy\/","title":{"rendered":"Africa&#8217;s Economic Growth Means More Garbage, Which Can Be Converted to Energy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">BY <a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/kensilverstein\/\"><strong>Ken Silverstein<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Going green will mean\ntossing the trash, literally. Cape Town, South Africa is using a\nwaste-to-energy plant to reduce the garbage in its landfill sites while also\nhelping to raise its use of green energy to a fifth of its electricity supply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The broader context is\nthat South Africa has an electricity crisis that has resulted in a series of\nbrownouts, all to prevent the transmission grid from buckling. In fact, Eskom,\nwhich is the state-run power provider, can\u2019t meet the daily demands and is now\nin need of a financial bailout. Enter waste-to-energy, which is an alternative\nsource of electricity \u2014 and one that can ease the country\u2019s reliance on coal.\nBut is this a preferred option?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cMunicipal landfill sites\nare not only an eyesore, they also pose serious environmental and health\nhazards by generating huge quantities of methane gas,\u201d says the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/climateneutralgroup.co.za\/joburg-waste-to-energy-project\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Climate Neutral Group<\/a>,\nwhich provides carbon management services in Africa. Its projects will \u201ccapture\nmethane from five landfills sites in Johannesburg and then turn it into\nelectricity, solving two serious issues that South Africa currently faces.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It expects to produce 19\nmegawatts of electricity that will power 16,500 homes \u2014 the biggest such\nproject in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Consider that&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/kensilverstein\/2019\/03\/10\/bill-gates-if-africa-can-be-electrified-the-whole-world-will-benefit-too\/#3a7886cf3311\">600 million people lack access to\nelectricity across the continent of Africa<\/a>. And by 2050, its\npopulation will grow from 1.1 billion people today to 2 billion, all while the\nregion\u2019s economy continues to expand by 10% a year. That means is that the\nAfrican people will be demanding more energy while also creating more garbage.\nIf waste-to-energy can become a worthwhile pursuit, it could help reshape\nAfrica \u2014 and other developing regions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Waste-to-energy is a form\nof biomass: everyday garbage is used as a feedstock to create electricity or\nheat. The other options are that the trash goes into a landfill and is\nsubsequently incinerated or it is recycled. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/kensilverstein\/2019\/08\/01\/africas-economic-growth-means-more-garbage-which-can-be-converted-to-energy\/#2e8361751901\">Read\nmore\u2026<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BY Ken Silverstein Going green will mean tossing the trash, literally. Cape Town, South Africa is using a waste-to-energy plant to reduce the garbage in its landfill sites while also&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4397,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}