What if the bush could be fed into a power plant, clearing land for grazing and simultaneously supplying Namibia with clean, renewable electricity in a region that is starved of energy?
WINDHOEK, Namibia (AlertNet) Â? The area around Otjiwarongo in Namibia's heartland is a green sea of short, shrubby trees as far as the eye can see. While beautiful to some, this bush is an invader species and seen by ranchers as a dreaded pest that pushes out nutritious grasses.
Since the 1950s, bad grazing practices have led to the bush taking over 26 million hectares of Namibia's rangeland - an area the size of New Zealand. That costs the country's beef farmers $160 million a year in lost earnings, in an industry that farmers say accounts for 3 to 6 percent to Namibia's gross domestic product.
But what if the bush could be fed into a power plant, clearing land for grazing and simultaneously supplying Namibia with clean, renewable electricity in a region that is starved of energy?
"(Burning) wood to make electricity is one of the cheapest renewable energy options available," said Robert Schultz, head of energy projects for the Desert Research Foundation of Namibia (DRFN), a think tank.
"And it is quick," he said. "Sixty minutes after powering up the plant, kilowatts are flowing into the grid. This makes it suitable to meet unexpected peaks in demand."
PLENTY OF BUSH TO BURN
A typical 4,000 hectare (10,000 acre) Namibian farm could provide enough wood to power more than 100 high-income homes for 25 years, the life of a generating unit, Schultz estimated. By conservative estimates, Namibia has enough bush to sustainability supply power to 600,000 high-income homes over that period.
With European Union funds, Schultz's think tank is starting a pilot project to turn Namibia's bush predicament into a biomass energy project.
On a farm 90 kilometres (56 miles) north of Otjiwarongo, construction has started on a power plant that by September will feed electricity into the national grid.
Cut brush will be burned in a low-oxygen environment to extract wood gas, which is then cleaned, cooled and burned in an internal combustion engine to make electricity.
In a country where energy tariffs are expected to triple in the next five years and where two-thirds of the population doesn't have access to electricity, construction of small power stations in remote areas could mean a dramatic improvement in living conditions for rural dwellers.
"Building power lines from existing substations to small isolated communities is simply too expensive. You are unlikely to even recover maintenance costs for the power line from the electricity sales, let alone a return on the capital investment," Schultz said.
THE CHALLENGES
The effort to turn Namibia's bush into electricity, however, does face a variety of problems, including the large quantities of cooling water needed to operate the electricity generating equipment.
A biomass gasifier being used in the pilot project requires 16,000 litres of water a day, a major challenge in famously arid Namibia.
"This was not foreseen during the feasibility phase and is a huge problem in a dry country like Namibia," said Schultz. "The daily water consumption of the plant is equal to that of 300 head of cattle."
His think tank is looking into ways to use the heat produced in the process, such as sterilising equipment, or pasteurising milk.
"This would reduce the need for cooling water and expand the income opportunities of the plants," Schultz said.
If the waste heat problem can be solved, the Combating Bush Encroachment for Namibia's Development, or CBEND, program hopes to roll out up to 300 of the wood gasifiers for its bush-to-electricity effort.
Schultz's think tank is carrying out the program in association with the Namibia Agricultural Union and the Namibia National Farmers' Union, as well as Namibia's electricity control board and government ministries dealing with agricultural land, forestry and water.
Other problems facing the effort include tar waste pollution from the burning of bush, and a potential loss of rangeland biodiversity if valuable native trees as well as invasive species are cut during bush harvesting.
"The biggest worry is inadequate law enforcement from the Department of Forestry and the inherent difficulties in enforcing proper bush-thinning," said CBEND researcher John Pallett.
"It's likely there will be more cutting of trees that are protected or valuable for the ecosystem and that are not encroachers, such as camelthorn and witgat," he admitted. "Monitoring is necessary, but who will do it?"
REDD INSTEAD?
Ministry of Environment officials have also pointed to the bush as a carbon sink that, if uncut, could potentially earn the country money under a future U.N. Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) regime.
Loss of forest each year contributes nearly 20 percent to the world's total greenhouse gas emissions. The REDD program, if fully implemented, would pay developing countries to keep their forests intact as a way of cutting global carbon emissions.
Schultz, however, said he believed turning invasive bush into power was a better option to offset Namibia's emissions, and offered social benefits by bringing power and jobs to people living without it.
Researchers estimate that each bush-to-energy plant would generate about 20 jobs excluding the actual harvesting of the bush.
Cost is another concern. Electricity from the proposed generating plants would cost almost quadruple the existing energy price to produce, and require government subsidies to thrive, though the costs would eventually fall once economies of scale kicked in and "our initial teething problems are sorted out," Schultz predicted.
At a recent workshop in Windhoek, Pallett said the pilot project in Otjiwarongo likely would be instrumental in deciding the feasibility of the idea of turning bush into energy in Namibia.
"If it proves to be viable then other farmers and investors might run with the idea and replicate it more widely," he predicted.
Many potential investors, he said, currently are waiting to see what subsidies the government might contribute to the effort.
Servaas van den Bosch is a freelance writer based in Windhoek, specialising in environment and trade reporting.
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