Load Shedding & Clean Energy
As Eskom just announced another round of load shedding 🌒 I thought it would be fitting to talk about clean energy ☀️💨- an (albeit non beauty 💅) topic that goes to the heart of sustainability 🌱
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Why does clean energy matter? It matters because ~90% of CO2 emissions come from burning 🔥 fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas. And CO2 emissions are set to reach an all time high (again) in 2019 😭
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Is clean energy viable though? It is now. When you mass manufacture something, the price of it comes down 📉 - same as what happened with computer chips 💻🍟. Sun ☀️ and wind 💨 are free, so the cost of producing energy from them depends on how much it costs to initially build a wind turbine or solar panel (and also the cost of keeping them going 🏃♀️). And those costs have been falling (pic 3-4) because the more you make of something, the more efficient and therefore cheaper it becomes. And every year we are making more solar panels and wind turbines. By the end of 2018, the world had 27% more solar power than at the beginning of the year 🤯
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But wind is unpredictable and it’s only sunny in the day? True, but batteries 🔋 are constantly becoming cheaper (thanks in part to growing production of electric cars 🚗 thanks Elon 🇿🇦). In future, large batteries can help us store power for when it’s not sunny or windy
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What can we do personally? What I love about clean energy is you can invest in it (and I do). It’s rare you get to do good and make money at the same time💰There are platforms even in SA 🇿🇦 crowdfunding solar installations. You can also look at putting solar on your roof 🏡, switching to an electric car 🚗 and of course, living a greener lifestyle in general 🌱
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Why don’t we have more wind & solar in SA? I don’t have enough space left to answer that question properly but we should and I believe we will. At the moment almost 80% of our power comes from coal (meanwhile, in the UK it’s 5% and approaching zero). But our Integrated Resource Plan, which was released on Tuesday, says the country needs 50% more power by 2030 and most of that will come from wind and solar.
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Have a lovely, earth conscious weekend everyone! 😍