In Kenya, Maasai women have found an eco-friendly solution to an invasive and hazardous plant.
Parts of the opuntia cactus are edible, but its outer layers are covered in spikes and harmful to livestock which try to graze on it.
A group of women are now transforming the prickly pear into a bio-gas and preserves.
It is bringing them a form of employment and a method of empowerment.
Kenya’s livestock threatened by invasive cactus
The wilderness of Laikipia County, near Nairobi, is home to goats and cattle that roam freely.
They are frequently attracted to grazing on prickly pears, but these are an invasive species which threaten the natural environment.
The cacti were introduced by colonialists in the early 1900s as a natural fence and have morphed into an invasive menace that outcompetes native plants.
Its seed gets widely dispersed by the wind and the animals that pass through.
The hairs which cover the fruit can cause internal obstructions when eaten by animals, posing a significant threat to livestock.
Local farmers say the cactus now competes for critical resources, jeopardising community lands, wildlife reserves and livestock ranches.
Its encroachment also hinders wildlife navigation as well as reducing grazing areas.
Naimadu Siranga, a 65-year-old herder, has witnessed the devastation of the cactus firsthand, leading to the loss of over 150 of his goats and sheep.
“I once maintained a herd of more than 100 goats. Unfortunately, a series of losses ensued when they started consuming cactus plants, which led to mouth injuries, severe diarrhoea, and ultimately, the demise of my livestock,” he says.
“These circumstances have inflicted significant financial setbacks.”
Women’s group transforms cacti into bio-fuel
Now a women’s group in Laikipia County is transforming the cacti from a problem into a new enterprise.
They harvest the prickly pear and turn it into biogas which they can use in their homes.
The Iloplei Twala Cultural Manyatta Women Group has 203 members who are now employed in converting the cactus pulp into fuel.
This approach not only eradicates the cactus but also promotes environmental conservation and offers an alternative livelihood for the women.
“We came together because in Maasai culture, women do all the domestic work and own nothing at home,” says Rosemary Nenini, a member of the group, “so we want to empower ourselves.”
The fruits from the cactus are edible for both humans and animals if separated from their sharp spines.
So the Twala women at Laikipia Permaculture are also using the fruit to create a range of products including jams, cosmetics and juices. This generates an independent income for them.
Cacti pose a danger to baby elephants
Loisaba Conservancy, a 58,000-acre wildlife habitat in northern Kenya, home to iconic species such as lions and wild dogs, also grapples with the invasive cactus.
Animals unwittingly facilitate the spread of this invasive plant. Baboons, elephants, guinea fowl, and tortoises consume the sweet fruit and disperse the seeds.
However, elephants, while skilled at extracting the fruit from the spiny thorns, sometimes suffer from digestive issues due to the fruit’s small hairs.
“If the elephant is young, the hairs of the fruit can irritate the gut lining, create diarrhoea and sometimes even irritation in the gut,” says Tom Silvester, the Conservancy’s Chief Executive.
Combatting this invasive species proves challenging, as it spreads aggressively, even on barren rock.
Traditional removal methods, like manual labour and burning, have proved ineffective.
Teams now use heavy machinery to uproot the cactus, transferring it to designated areas and burying it in deep pits to minimise carbon emissions during decomposition.
This strategy results in fertile zones where native plants can regenerate and flourish.
As of June 2023, Loisaba Conservancy successfully cleared 3,100 acres of opuntia, marking a significant step in the fight against this environmental menace.
Research scientist Winnie Nunda from the Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International says it’s a step towards preserving the country’s biodiversity.
The UAE and Malta have today (5 December) announced that they have joined the Powering Past Coal Alliance (PPCA), committing to transition from unabated coal power generation to clean energy.
It marks a key step for the COP Presidency, which is still facing accusations that it is using the climate summit to boost its oil and gas exports.
For all the size of its oil and gas economy, which makes up 40% of government revenue, the UAE does not have any coal reserves and operates only one coal-fired power station. Indeed, the UAE stopped using coal in power generation in 2022.
Malta is not a major coal player, with no domestic coal extraction. It does import some coal for heavy industry from markets including the EU. Malta phased out coal power in 1996.
Malta and the UAE bring the total number of new PPCA members announced at COP28 up to nine. Other members include the US, the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Dominican Republic, Iceland, Kosovo and Norway. The PPCA now covers 59 countries.
The PPCA argues that the UAE joining the Alliance sends a strong signal for a complete coal phase-out to be included at COP, which its members have also been advocating for.
Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, COP28 President-Designate, United Arab Emirates said: “Today I am delighted to announce that the United Arab Emirates has joined the Powering Past Coal Alliance. Since COP23, this Alliance has been a leader in driving global momentum to move beyond coal and towards cleaner forms of energy.
“The path to decarbonisation must involve a transition away from unabated coal towards renewable energies. We are clear on the course of action needed and are determined that COP28 provides actionable solutions to enable progress.”
The Alliance is also launching a call to include a commitment in the cover decision of the Global Stocktake to end unabated new coal and phase it out in line with 1.5C. Draft texts of the Global Stocktake emerged at COP28 overnight.
The 12-page document, “welcomes” that the Paris Agreement has “driven near-universal climate action by setting goals and sending signals to the world regarding the urgency of responding to the climate crisis”.
However, the draft text “notes with significant concern” emissions are not in line with modeled global mitigation pathways consistent with the temperature goal of the Paris Agreement. It warns of a “rapidly narrowing window to raise ambition and implement existing commitments” in order to limit warming to 1.5C.
The document is currently light on mentions as to how fossil fuels should be phased-out and also lacks detail on key biodiversity mechanisms such as combatting deforestation and championing nature-based solutions.
Data centres are well-known for being energy guzzlers because of the growth of digital demand. Worldwide, they consume an estimated 200 terawatt hours a year (TWh/yr), or nearly 1 per cent of global electricity demand.
That said, the energy consumption of data centres has not grown at the exponential rate of Internet traffic. This is due to the huge strides made in energy efficiency in data centres. Improvements in the efficiency of servers, storage devices and data centre infrastructure, as well as the move away from small data centres to larger cloud and hyperscale data centres, have all helped to limit the growth of electricity demand.
According to figures from a report by the International Energy Agency (IEA), from 2010 to 2020, the number of internet users worldwide has doubled and global internet traffic has expanded 15-fold. But global data centre energy use has been flat since 2015, at about 200 TWh/yr.
Globally, leading data centre operators have committed to carbon neutrality and science-based targets for emissions reduction by 2030. To achieve these goals, they have partnered with technology companies to develop ways of reducing energy consumption at all levels of operation – from direct-to-chip cooling to providing on-site prime power through alternative energy fuel cells.
New cooling solutions
One of the main areas of innovation is developing new solutions to cool data centres more efficiently as their capacity grows. Typically, cooling accounts for a large proportion of overall power consumption. Estimates from 2021 suggest that the figure ranges from 30 to 37 per cent.
Air cooling has been widely adopted in data centres since their inception. The basic principle of such systems involves circulating cold air around the hardware to dissipate heat.
More high power-density racks of up to 50kW are being deployed in data centres, such as those at Equinix’s International Business Exchange (IBX) data centres around the world. Source: Equinix.
But air cooling systems are struggling to keep up with the increases in the power density of racks. Thanks to new generations of central processing units (CPUs), rack power requirements have moved from below 20 kilowatts (kW) to up to 40 or 50 kW today, easily.
Air cooling systems have evolved to address higher densities, but there is a point at which air just does not have the thermal transfer properties to do so in an efficient manner. This has caused organisations to look into liquid cooling, as water and other fluids are up to 3,000 times more efficient in transferring heat than air.
Liquid cooling is available in a variety of configurations that use different technologies, including rear door heat exchangers and direct-to-chip cooling.
Rear door heat exchangers is the more mature technology, where a liquid-filled coil is mounted in place of the rear door of the rack. As server fans move heated air through the rack, the coil absorbs the heat before the air enters the data centre.
Direct-to-chip cooling integrates the cooling system directly into the computer’s chassis. A liquid coolant is brought via tubes directly to the chip, where it absorbs heat and removes it from the data hall. The warm liquid is then circulated to a cooling device or heat exchange.
One of the world’s largest data centre providers, Equinix, for example, is developing a new direct-to-chip cooling technology at their Co-Innovation Facility (CIF) located in the Washington DC area. Developed in collaboration with Zutacore, the system introduces a cooling fluid to an evaporator overlying the CPU to absorb heat directly, which in turn causes the liquid to evaporate and produce a constant temperature over the CPU.
Hotter temperatures
Some operators are challenging the thinking that data centres should be operated at low temperatures of 20 to 22 degrees celsius. There is evidence to support the running of data centres ‘hot’, i.e., increasing their temperature by 1 or 2 degrees Celsius, which improves efficiency without any significant sacrifices in system reliability.
In Singapore, the Infocomm Media Development Authority has been trialing the world’s first ‘tropical data centre’, to test if data centres can function optimally at temperatures of up to 38 degrees Celsius and ambient humidity up to or exceeding 90 per cent.
Running with simulated data, the trial would test how data servers react under various situations, such as peak surges or while transferring data, and in conditions such as with no temperature or humidity controls.
Using digital resources and analytics to optimise energy usage
Smart solutions monitoring energy consumption patterns allow data centres to configure the optimal use of their resources, as well as to identify and diagnose equipment problems and take steps to fix them. Software powered by artificial intelligence (AI) can also assist companies to better manage their infrastructure and maximise the utilisation of their CPUs.
In an interview with Fortune, Equinix’s chief executive Charles Meyer explained that AI is used in the company’s data centres to “anticipate where power needs to be applied, how cooling… needs to be done to improve the power usage efficiency of the facility overall”.
Using on-site lower-carbon energy sources
New cooling solutions and digital resources are offsetting the energy consumption from increasing data centre services. However, there remains the question of energy supply to the facility overall.
A totally carbon-free solution would involve locating a data centre beside a wind- or solar-generated renewable energy source, or purchasing 100 per cent green energy from the grid. But these may not always be feasible solutions. In Singapore, for instance, space constraints limit the use of solar energy, and wind conditions are not sufficient for wind power.
Alternatives include the use of fuel cells for primary power supply at data centres. Fuel cells generate power through electrochemical reactions using natural gas, biogas or LPG. Testing by Equinix at CIF indicates they are 20 to 40 per cent cleaner than gas-powered electricity generation.
Fuel cells generate power through electrochemical reactions using natural gas, biogas or LPG. Source: Equinix.
When fuel cells are set up near data centres, there are even greater efficiencies. The generated electricity has less distance to travel and hence less energy is lost in the transmission process.
Equinix has deployed fuel cells at 15 of its facilities, including the carrier-neutral SV11 opened in San Jose in 2021, which utilises 4 megawatts (MW) of fuel cells for primary power production on site and can scale up to 20 MW of fuel cells.
Equinix is also part of a consortium of seven companies (including InfraPrime, RISE, Snam, SOLIDpower, TEC4FUELS and Vertiv) which launched the Eco Edge Prime Power (E2P2) project. E2P2 is exploring the integration of fuel cells with uninterruptible power supply technology and lithium-ion batteries to provide resilient and low-carbon primary power to data centres.
This work will also pave the way to transition from natural gas to green hydrogen (hydrogen produced using renewable energy) in fuel cells. Such advances are a step change towards sustainability where green hydrogen is available.
A holistic approach
Energy efficiency is crucial in determining future emissions in an industry that will continue growing in response to digitalisation and data consumption.
Besides energy efficiency, major data centre operators are interested in holistic sustainability gains that minimise carbon emissions. They consider how sustainable their supply chains are, total resource use and the company’s whole carbon footprint such as the embodied carbon in building materials.
Equinix, for example, has adopted a global climate-neutral goal by 2030 and has embedded decarbonisation actions across its business and supply chain.
Jason Plamondon, Equinix’s regional manager for sustainability in Asia-Pacific, says that the company is “well on (its) way to meeting (its) climate commitments, with over 95 per cent renewable coverage for (its) portfolio in FY21, maintaining over 90 per cent for the fourth consecutive year”.
He adds: “As the world’s digital infrastructure company, we have the responsibility to harness the power of technology to create a more accessible, equitable and sustainable future. Our Future First sustainability approach includes continuing to innovate and develop new technologies that contribute to protecting our planet.”
DHL Supply Chain announced the launch of the 20 vehicles, which are Volvo’s FH Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) tractor unit models with Globetrotter cabs, on Monday morning (13 June). They will be used to transport M&S products across the retailer’s routes in Peterborough, Swindon and Castle Donington, replacing pure diesel models.
An 80% reduction in tailpipe emissions is expected to be delivered through the introduction of the trucks, which will be powered using bio-based LNG. DHL last year began sourcing bio-LNG from Shell, which produces the fuel from agricultural waste, to power trucks for Danish pump manufacturer Grundfos. edie has requested information on the source of the bio-LNG for M&S.
Should non-renewable LNG need to be used to power the trucks at any point, they will still generate 10-20% less tailpipe emissions than their diesel predecessor, DHL said in a statement.
DHL is notably aiming to operate more than 500 LNG-powered heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) in Europe by 2025, as it works towards net-zero by 2050. The company promised to set verified 2030 emissions reduction targets through the Science-Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) last year to support this long-term vision, and pledged €7bn to deliver decarbonisation. It is yet to gain SBTi approval for these targets.
Other low-carbon transport commitments already unveiled by DHL include operating more than 80,000 electric and hybrid vehicles globally by 2030. The firm confirmed in March that it will add at least 270 new electric vans to its UK fleet by September, following the launch of 100 in 2021.
As for M&S, the retailer updated its flagship ‘Plan A’ sustainability strategy last September, with major commitments to net-zero operations by 2035 and a net-zero supply chain by 2040 among the new additions. Plan A’s webpage lists ‘zero-emissions transport’ as a priority through to 2025 – but M&S is yet to set new targets for sourcing a certain number of certain vehicles within set timeframes.
M&S’s head of transport Tim Greenwood said: “We are committed to reducing our environmental impact in line with our Plan A sustainability action plan. It’s important to us that our partners’ values and ambitions align with ours and that’s one of the reasons we have a long-standing relationship with DHL. Replacing diesel trucks for brand new bio-LNG vehicles is a good step forward in reducing our carbon emissions.”
Biogas backers
Other businesses investing in biogas trucks to reduce transport emissions include brewer Anheuser-Busch, Evri (formerly Hermes) Royal Mail and M&S competitor John Lewis Partnership, which owns Waitrose & Partners.
To date, it has been easier for many businesses to replace diesel HGVs with those powered by alternative fuels such as bio-LNG than with electric alternatives. The larger and heavier a vehicle is, the more challenging it is to electrify while retaining the same performance.
However, a new generation of electric HGVs is beginning to emerge. Sainsbury’s trialled fully electric refrigerated trailer lorries last year, integrated them into its fleet this year, and is now developing smart charging solutions for them.
Aldi UK is also trialling similar vehicles, assessing their performance in comparison to those powered with alternative fuels – as are Amazon and Carlsberg Group.
Minister of Power Dullas Alahapperuma says the first power plant generating electricity using solid waste in Sri Lanka established in the Kerawalapitiya area in Hendala will be added to the national grid by Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa on the 17th of this month.
The power plant is planned to generate 10 megawatts using 700 tons of garbage daily and will operate by collecting waste from the area.
The Minister said that the use of waste collected in this manner for the generation of electricity in the entire district is also environmentally beneficial.
In addition, the Ministry of Power plans to commence the first project to generate electricity from biogas using biodegradable waste in the Matara District.
Source: Business News LK
The project, which is being constructed in Kotawila in the Matara District, is planned to add 400 kilowatts to the national grid using 40 tons of garbage per day. The project is expected to be operationalized by October this year and added to the national grid.
President Gotabhaya Rajapaksa’s Vision of Prosperity policy framework marks the milestones of an innovative power generation process that goes beyond conventional power generation, and as the Minister in charge of the subject, he has been given the challenge of increasing the contribution of renewable energy to 70% of the national grid by the year 2023, Minister Alahapperuma said.
The Minister added that it was his responsibility to overcome the challenge and provide uninterrupted, quality, reliable and affordable electricity to the electricity consumers. Accordingly, steps will be taken in the future to implement the process of generating electricity from garbage as well as the process of generating electricity from biogas at the district level covering the entire island, said the Minister of Power, Dullas Alahapperuma.
