GREENer HOUSE

Not as green as it looks

I’ve just finished writing an article for Red: the Green Magazine about a rather personal issue. Friends and relatives scoffed and chuckled when they heard that I was researching the environmental implications of toilet paper, but by the time I was finished I saw my father-in-law carrying a 9-roll pack of greener loo-paper home from the store. My wife has also switched to the environmentally friendly option.

So which paper is best? Good ol’ cheap 1-ply. Any brand will do because they are virtually all made from recycled paper, but if you want the added benefit of knowing that your roll hasn’t been rolling down the highway accumulating a carbon footprint, Twinsaver is made in Cape Town, Durban and Gauteng, so you are virtually assured of a local roll if you buy it in one of those areas. Carlton is only made in Gauteng. Otherwise, look for a local manufacturer.

I’ve heard all the arguments against 1-ply. People say it actually costs more because you have to use twice as much. This is wrong on three counts. For starters single ply is more than half as thick as double ply, 5/8s as thick to be precise. And there are 500 sheets on a 1-ply roll—or should be—and only 350 sheets on a 2-ply roll. Finally, research suggests that people use about the same number of sheets regardless of the thickness.

The other argument against 1-ply is that it is rougher. I cannot deny that it is not quite as soft. So keep one roll of extravagant, environmentally noxious, virgin 2-ply on hand for those moments when some unmentionable condition makes you tender down there. And let us know if you find a 1-ply that you think is softer than most.

Whatever you do, don’t waste your money on any high-priced bog roll purporting to be “green.” If you want to know why, you can read the full article from Red below:

How many trees have you flushed down the toilet in your lifetime? The South African paper industry is equipped to manufacture 4.7 kilograms of tissue a year for every man, woman and child in the country. So it is a reasonable estimate that consumers of tissue made from virgin wood will consume about a tree every decade.

Fortunately, South Africans have a large and growing range of options to reduce their loo-print, ranging from toilet paper made from sugar-cane fibre to 100-percent-recycled, 2-ply rolls. With choice comes confusion, however, and paying extra for green marketing may not help the environment. Often the cheapest rolls are also the greenest. When buying toilet tissue, saving the environment and saving money can go hand in hand.

For decades, most South Africans have been using 100 percent recycled toilet paper—without paying an extra cent. These shoppers did not even know they were making the environmentally friendly choice, though they might have noticed a few speckles in the paper that suggested its former existence as office paper. Three-quarters of the toilet rolls sold in South Africa are single-ply rolls that are usually tree-free, something shoppers would never know from reading the labels. The more expensive, two-ply toilet tissue is mostly made from virgin wood pulp.

The problem with virgin toilet paper is not the lost trees—they generally come from forest plantations where each harvested tree is replaced by a seedling. But toilet paper from wood pulp unleashes a host of other assaults against the environment for a product that gets used for only a few seconds. Tree farms take up land that could otherwise be home to diverse natural forests. The conventional pulping and papermaking process uses twice as much water and far more energy than recycled toilet paper. And logs, pulp and tissue are regularly shipped all the way across South Africa, adding to virgin paper’s expansive carbon footprint. Recycled toilet paper, by contrast, is often sourced, manufactured and sold all in the same city.

In the past year, Woolworths has decided to turn these secret virtues of single-ply tissue into a marketing advantage. The packaging on their rolls now proudly proclaims that their toilet paper is “made from 100% recycled material” and is “as kind to the environment as it is to your skin.”

Another product to begin addressing environmental concerns about toilet paper is Essential Green, from Esspack. Sold in Cape Town pharmacies and at “green” stores such as Enchantrix in the Cape and Wellness Warehouse in Gauteng, Essential Green is made of 60 percent sugar-cane bagasse fibres.

Bagasse sounds like the perfect raw material for toilet paper. Sugar cane grows fast, the bagasse fibre is a waste byproduct of milling, and compared to wood it requires less energy to process. In addition, the paper mill that makes bagasse-based tissue, Sappi Stanger, uses one of the better bleaching processes: chlorine dioxide with hydrogen peroxide. These are the features that give Essential Green’s distributor, Esspack, the confidence to say: “Now you can have luxury, and care for the environment.”

But compared with 100 percent recycled tissue, sugar-cane toilet tissue does not seem quite so sweet. To add softness that bagasse lacks, Sappi adds 40 percent virgin wood pulp. Recycled tissue uses even less water and energy. And though bagasse may be a byproduct, Sappi is not rescuing it from landfills. Sugar mills normally burn the cane residue to produce the heat, steam and electricity they need. In fact, sugar-cane biomass is one of the few sources of renewable electricity in South Africa. The main sugar mill that supplies Sappi with bagasse actually has to burn more coal to compensate for the lost fibre.

Since the bagasse paper is produced by only one mill, it also travels farther. A 9-roll pack of Essential Green sold in Gauteng first had to be milled in KwaZulu-Natal and then cut and rolled in the Western Cape. Environmentally conscious shoppers are beginning to wise up to the importance of buying locally-farmed produce. Do they want to buy toilet paper that has traveled 2000 kilometres? (If you want to buy closest to home, check the label for a manufacturer in your province, or buy Twinsaver single ply which is made in three locations near major markets.)

Bleaching is another serious issue where recycled paper holds the green edge. For decades, paper mills turned brown wood into white paper and tissue by using pure chlorine, which results in carcinogenic dioxin, the pollutant that led to a ban on fishing and swimming in the Mvoti River downstream of a Sappi mill. Today almost all South African mills have switched to bleaching with chlorine dioxide, which eliminates most—but not all—dioxin pollution.

Consumers who want totally chlorine-free toilet paper have a few options. Much recycled one-ply paper, especially the cheaper, greyer grades, are unbleached. Nampak brightens its single-ply Twinsaver tissue by de-inking the recycled fibres with air bubbles and then brightening them with a totally chlorine-free process. Must Paper Industries of Nelspruit supplies a light-brown, unbleached virgin Enviro Toilet Paper. (Marketed in Cape Town by www.greenhome.co.za.) Brown toilet paper has not taken South Africa by storm, however. As the owner of Must Industries, Michiel Jansen, says, “the funny thing with toilet paper is that the whiter it is, the more acceptable it is to the market. It doesn’t matter what’s in it or how you get it white.”

Finally, imported Seventh Generation 2-ply recycled toilet paper has arrived on the shelves of Wellness Warehouse and other specialty stores. It costs a little more, and after traveling 15 000 kilometres from Canada, must have the worst carbon footprint of any toilet paper sold in South Africa. But it does at least prove that if South African tissue manufacturers saw a market for a reasonably soft, green, two-ply recycled toilet paper, they could make it. Gert Nell, corporate purchasing manager for Kimberly Clark makes the same point. Says Nell, “If consumers demand it, we will make it.”

Polar Bears Don't Like AC

The December issue of Red: the Green Magazine is out in the Cape, and it features an article I wrote about alternatives to air conditioning, especially evaporative cooling.  Here’s what it has to say:

Craig Bransgrove has been installing air conditioning in Cape Town homes and offices for the last six years. So it may seem surprising that when he recently installed a cooling system for his own home, he did not choose traditional air conditioning at all. Bransgrove’s Blouberg home uses an evaporative cooling system that takes advantage of the same effect that makes a wet swimming costume feel so chilly on a windy day. “I looked at all the options,” says Bransgrove. “It’s a lot healthier and it’s cost effective.”

Evaporative cooling is gaining popularity as environmentally conscious South Africans increasingly look for ways to keep cool without resorting to air conditioning. In the driest parts of the country, the systems are actually more common than refrigeration air conditioning in residential installments. “I don’t think there’s a household in Upington that doesn’t have evap cooling in it,” says Philip Coreejes, owner of Hi Power Electric.

Using only water and air, evaporative cooling is the greener alternative both for indoor air quality and for the atmosphere. Unlike air conditioning, which works best when recirculating stale air in a well-sealed building, evaporative coolers ensure a constant flow of outside air. They use no refrigerants that damage the ozone layer. And by using a fraction of the electricity consumed by air conditioner compressors, they avoid warming the globe while cooling your home. John Bass, owner of Fresh Air Environment and Temperature Control in George says, “when people ask me about air conditioning, I ways tell them, ‘if you can possibly use evaporative cooling, go that way.’”

Most evaporative coolers work by trickling water over a porous filter made of treated paper and blowing air through it. As the air picks up moisture, it gives up its heat and the air temperature falls by a few degrees. The more expensive two-stage coolers first use evaporation to cool the water before it comes in contact with the air. This allows greater cooling with lower humidity.

In South Africa, some of the most common brands of single-stage coolers are Cool Breeze and Breezair, both made in Australia. A well established South African manufacturer of two-stage coolers is Protek.

Corporations have been leading the advance of evaporative cooling in South Africa. From office buildings for Cell C and Altech Autopage in Gauteng to factories for Bokomo in the Western Cape, companies are taking advantage of the electricity savings. “It’s taking off like a rocket with power restrictions now,” says Neels Claassen, co-founder of Protek.

Outside of the Kalahari, however, few homeowners are aware of the option. Humidity levels are too high along the Indian Ocean Coast of KwaZulu-Natal, but in much of the Highveld and Cape, evaporative cooling is vastly underutilized. Bransgrove, the owner of Thermodynamics in Cape Town, says that he was skeptical that the Mother City was suited to evaporative cooling until a friend visited Australia to research their home-cooling market. “Every house in Perth has evaporative cooling, and they have the same climate,” he says. People in the industry disagree as to whether evaporative cooling is suited to Cape Town’s most humid suburbs, such as Newlands. But there is no doubt that it functions well from the northern suburbs and beyond.

Evaporative cooling can save money upfront as well. Compared to just buying a couple of window-unit air conditioners, an evaporative system will always cost more, because it requires ducting air from one central unit into each room. But as an alternative to cooling all of a large house with air conditioners, evaporative cooling may come with a lower installation price. For a commercial building, evaporative cooling can cost half as much as air conditioning.

More dramatic savings come when the device is operating. Evaporative coolers generally use one-half to one-six of the power of equivalent air conditioners. Bransgrove says that a central air conditioner for his home might have used 14 kilowatts, whereas his Breezair unit has a maximum power of less than 1 kilowatt. He frequently runs the unit on a low setting that draws little more than 100 watts.

That is a fact that Eskom should appreciate after last summer’s power shortages. Fred Rodo, who has researched the South African refrigeration air conditioning market, says that sales grew 600 percent over the last 10 years. He draws a direct connection between the resulting electricity consumption and the load-shedding debacle.

Beyond the stress on the electricity infrastructure and the accompanying greenhouse gas emissions, air conditioning still poses a threat to the ozone layer. Though CFCs have been banned in South Africa, their most common replacement, an HCFC known as R-22, also depletes ozone, though to a lesser degree. Its weaker chemical impact on ozone is offset by the huge increase in air conditioner sales.

Of course there are ways to keep cool that use even less electricity than an evaporative cooler—or none at all. Ceiling fans typically use well under 100 watts. A couple of R1500 turbine ventilators such as the Whirlybird use no power and can release trapped heat from the roof space. Ceiling insulation can cool a home considerably in summer. Cellulose insulation has the added benefit that it is made from recycled newspaper. Finally, if you take a cool bath and then stand in front of an open window, wet and naked, you become a human evaporative cooler yourself.

Call me petty, but when I received a gorgeous shirt as a gift recently, I was a little disappointed because two Jeep tags were sewn onto the front of the shirt. (Green tags nogal!)

Chrysler consistently ranks at or near the bottom of fleet fuel economy rankings in the United States, and Jeeps are the thirstist vehicles in the Chrysler stable. Some Jeeps are rated at more than 21 liters per 100 kilometres. (4.7 kms/l or 11 miles/gallon.) They definitely have not earned their green tags.

I’d rather not walk around in a shirt that adds any cachet to the Jeep brand, but I didn’t want to waste a beautiful shirt. So I solved this problem with the help of a stitch-ripper, a handy tool that should be a part of any sewing kit. Without the green tags, my shirt is so much greener.

With petrol breaking the R10 barrier today, I’m sure the newspapers will be hauling out the AA’s list of fuel-saving tips yet again. We’ve all read them least a dozen times. The list is generally sound: use the correct tyre pressure, don’t accelerate too quickly, etc., etc., etc. Our eyes are glazing over, however. It’s time for a new list. It’s time to push the envelope.

The fuel consumption numbers in the literature for new cars (and now on windshield stickers in South Africa) are useful for comparing between cars. But few people can keep their fuel consumption that low on the streets. The official stats are derived under very controlled conditions that don’t really reflect the habits of typical drivers.

I hate to brag, but I do consistently match or beat the official fuel consumption figures for the cars I drive. You can, too. Follow me.

[Lawyer's note: Use these tips at your own risk. GreenerHouse is not responsible for your prang. Safety first.]

1. Don’t brake.
2. Hold your right foot in the air
3. Watch your rev counter
4. In town, windows down
5. Ride the roller coaster
6. Drive your spouse’s car
7. Change your clocks
8. Know your numbers
9. Rearrange your “To Do” list
10. Drive farther . . .

1. Don’t brake

Ok, if a ball rolls out into the street with a child running behind it, slam on the brakes, but most braking is an unnecessary waste of energy. You must learn to feel guilty every time you brake, converting all of that good momentum your engine has given you into wasted friction and heat, requiring you to accelerate all over again.

Not braking requires planning ahead, allowing space in front of your vehicle and exercising patience. A typical example is a street with speed bumps. Most drivers accelerate after each bump and brake before each bump. It makes no sense. The bumps are there because the people who live on that street convinced the government that cars should drive slowly for the safety of the neighbourhood’s children and pedestrians. Settle into the speed at which your car can handle the bumps and stay there. Unless you’re heading downhill, you shouldn’t have to brake.

Look way ahead to the traffic lights and let your car slow naturally well in advance of a red light. People are always in a hurry to sit at a red robot, wanting to give the poor smash-and-grabbers a sporting chance. Don’t worry about the guy behind you flashing his headlights. You’re saving him petrol and a smashed window, too. Smile and wave.

If you have to brake at the bottom of a hill or before a curve, it probably means that you were accelerating unnecessarily a few moments before. Slow down in advance—it’s not safe to brake on a curve, anyway—and keep your foot off that darned brake.

2. Hold your right foot in the air

Many drivers apparently have weak quadriceps in their right leg. The foot at the end of it can always be found resting on either the accelerator or on the brake. I spend a tremendous amount of my driving time with my foot in neither place, just coasting. I usually keep the foot hovering over the brake pedal for safety in case that child runs out chasing the ball.

This is a corollary of rule number 1, because the more you coast, the less you will need to brake. On your regular driving route, start figuring out where you can start coasting. For example, as you approach your driveway, where on the street can you take your foot of the accelerator in order to coast to a slow enough speed to turn into your house? This is good for security, too. It gives you a chance to check to see if you are being followed and to get your automatic gate or garage door—if you have one—open by the time you reach the driveway.

3. Watch your rev counter

Yes, look up occasionally for the ball and the child, but keep your eyes on the rev counter, or tachometer, too. The faster your engine turns, the more petrol it uses. On my automatic-transmission Honda Jazz, my goal is to never let my engine go above 2000 revolutions per minute at city speeds. (On the highway, it goes well above that; this rule applies to slow driving only.) Unless I must accelerate from a dead stop up a steep hill, patient driving will keep it below that figure. Two-thousand is not a general rule; you may need to find a different figure for your car.

On a manual transmission vehicle, there are two ways to keep revs down. One is to go easy on the accelerator. Watching the rev counter is a tool to teach gentle acceleration. The other is to shift sooner. Most people shift way too late. This not only increases fuel consumption, it shortens the lifespan of the clutch. As long as the car doesn’t buck, shudder or stall, you haven’t shifted too early. The optimum point of fuel consumption is the slowest speed at which you comfortably drive in the highest gear. When the revs are low, the car does lose some of its ability to quickly accelerate. But if fast acceleration is your main goal, you might as well stop reading this list.

4. In town, windows down

AA South Africa’s list has two somewhat contradictory pieces of advice. One tip says to turn off the air conditioner; another says to keep the windows up. That’s fine in the winter, but passing out from heat stroke in summer is not good for road safety.

A commonly repeated piece of advice is that air conditioning uses less fuel than rolling down windows. I think this is overly simplistic. The advice is based on the fact that rolling down windows reduces the wind resistance of a car. But wind resistance increases by the square of the speed. So when driving 120 kph on the highway, wind resistance is a huge factor in fuel consumption. (This also explains why reducing your highway speed moderately can greatly reduce your consumption.) So the AC-is-better-than-open-windows advice probably does apply here. But driving with windows all the way down at that speed is so unpleasant that you are not likely to do it anyway.

Driving at an average urban speed of, say, 45 kph, creates about one-seventh the wind resistance that you get at highway speed. So if opening the windows keeps the car cool enough to avoid air conditioning, it will save petrol. This is especially true because air conditioning has a greater impact on fuel consumption in town driving. According to the French environmental agency, air conditioning increases fuel consumption on average by 16 percent in highway driving and by a tres grande 31 percent in town.

If you are driving in an unsafe area—e.g. South Africa—you can still lower your windows by a few centimetres. In fact this is said to make a window more difficult—but not impossible—to smash.

5. Ride the roller coaster

Cruise control has its place, but constant speed is overrated. A roller-coaster car speeds up as it heads downhill and slows down as it climbs again. Doing this, a roller-coaster car achieves fuel consumption of 0 litres per 100 kilometres. We should take this as a hint.

When driving in hilly territory, strive for constant pressure on the accelerator, not constant speed. On a steep downhill you may need no pressure on the accelerator at all, but let the car build speed toward the bottom of the hill. (I didn’t say exceed the speed limit; your traffic fine is your problem.) On the way up the hill, allow the car to slow very gradually. By the crest of the hill, you should be well under the speed limit in order to take advantage of the next downhill. In heavy traffic on roads without passing lanes, you may need to moderate your speed changes. Try not to give the car behind you an excuse to make a dangerous pass.

Cruise control can save fuel in flat territory, especially if your weak quadriceps cause your foot to increasing weigh down the accelerator.

6. Drive your spouse’s car

In the middle of 2006, my wife and I decided that we had to do something about rising petrol prices. (How we long for those prices now!) We came to the conclusion that it no longer made sense to have “her car” and “his car.” Since one vehicle—a Honda Jazz—used less petrol, whoever needed to drive farther would use that car.

As a result, our use of the larger car—a Honda Odyssey minivan—has dropped from about two-thirds of our kilometres traveled to just 37 percent, almost in half. Swapping cars on a daily basis requires a little bit of coordination and is a minor inconvenience, but the swap is saving us about 700 litres of petrol a year. That’s R7000 at current prices.

7. Change your clocks

We all know that hard acceleration increases fuel consumption. Some tests have found that hurrying away from a dead stop causes a car to burn more than 30 percent more fuel. But when we’re running late, good intentions go flying out the tailpipe, and we press the pedal to the metal.

A lot of people find that they can trick themselves into leaving home or the office on time by setting their clocks five minutes fast. If you’re easily fooled, do it. Don’t set the clock ahead in your car, however. That way, you will see that you have plenty of time when you get behind the wheel. And a relaxed driver is a fuel efficient driver.

8. Know your numbers

Your chances of losing weight if you never step onto a scale are, well, slim. Equally, if you want to save petrol, it helps to know your numbers. Nissan has calculated that having a fuel-efficiency gauge on a car leads to a 10 percent reduction in fuel consumption. If you have such a gauge on your car, keep your eye on it when you’re not watching the tachometer or the kid chasing the ball. Reset it regularly so that you can monitor changes. It will encourage good habits. You can even fill up boring hours driving across the Karoo by tracking the differences in fuel efficiency with or without the air conditioner and at different driving speeds.

If you don’t have a gauge, reset your trip odometer every time you fill up and do a quick calculation. Litres per 100 km, the preferred metric, is quite simple to calculate in your head. Divide the number of kilometres driven by 100, knocking off two zeros. Then divide that number into the number of litres to fill your tank. So 500 kms and 40 litres becomes 40 divided by 5, resulting in 8 litres per 100 kilometres. Better yet, keep track of this information on a log book or spreadsheet, so that you can spot trends and changes.

9. Rearrange your “To Do” list

I brazenly stole this idea from David Allen, author of Getting Things Done. Allen’s goal is to improve personal efficiency, but this tip can boost fuel efficiency, too. He suggests that you organize your “To Do” list according to the place where you must get the task done. Phone calls you need to make go on one sublist for you to accomplish when you are at the phone, email tasks on another for when you are in your email software, and home repairs on yet another sublist to look at when you are in your house.

More important for your petrol consumption, errands are organized according to where you must drive to accomplish them. My “To Do” list has a heading for the East Rand, Downtown Johannesburg, Randburg, and a few other places closer to home. If a task can wait a week or two, I’m likely to find more errands in the same part of town. By consolidating a few trips into one, I’m not only “Getting Things Done;” I’m saving petrol.

10. Drive farther . . .

. . . but less frequently. A cold engine uses a lot more petrol, and emits a lot more pollutants. One study showed that in the first kilometre of driving on a zero-degree day, a car was using nearly double the petrol it consumed on the fourth kilometre. Even on a warm day, fuel efficiency in the first kilometre was 47 percent worse than in the fourth. And catalytic converters are nearly useless at cleaning up exhaust pollutants until they heat up.

So look for ways to cut down on short trips, by walking, cycling or consolidating several trips into one. (Using your reorganized “To Do” list, of course.) When you must make several stops, drive to the farthest errand first. As you work you way home, your engine should retain enough heat from the first leg to carry you through the rest of your short drives.

Since the issue of Maverick containing my Solar Photovoltaics vs. Diesel Generators article is off the newsstands, I can now publish the article in full on Greenerhouse. Enjoy:

Bringing Back the Light:

Diesel vs. Photovoltaic

It began with an email. My brother-in-law asked me, the family’s resident green guru, to weigh up the relative merits of diesel generators vs. solar power.

Load shedding is clearly driving him to distraction. Computers are crashing in his home office, and he has scrambled to reschedule meetings of 30 and 40 people to stay out of the dark. He wants to know that the power will be there where he needs it, when he needs it. “I’m looking for a complete solution, and I don’t want hassles,” he told me, admitting that he was close to choosing the diesel route.

But he also knows that his green credentials need some buffing since he traded in his Honda Jazz for a Land Rover Discovery last year. Is solar electricity an affordable alternative?

Until the beginning of this year, the answer to his question would have been simple: In South Africa, solar cells may be virtuous, but they don’t pay for themselves. (Solar hot-water panels do pay for themselves, but you can’t run your PC on hot water.) Even the national sales manager for Sanyo photovoltaic panels in South Africa, Win Kurzyca, says, “it doesn’t pay me to put 10 of these on my roof—even at staff price—instead of paying 32 cents a kilowatt hour for electricity.”

But suddenly everything has changed. In fact, the question has changed. My swaer is not asking whether photovoltaic panels pay for themselves; he wants to know whether solar electricity is competitive with diesel-generated electricity.

Diesel gensets have become the latest accessory for the manor homes of South Africa’s best suburbs. On one block in Houghton, Johannesburg, three homes in a row glow brightly during each load-shedding event, automatically powered by Cummins engines installed for a cool R200 000 each. Forget the jet set; in 2008 we ogle the genset.

Such outlandish figures are as thrilling for solar cell manufacturers as they are for the diesel makers. The price of a solar roof no longer seems quite so ridiculous, especially once a generator begins slurping fuel. When Sanyo ran a full-page advertisement promoting its panels in The Star and Sunday Times, just before the latest round of load-shedding began, the response jammed the company’s switchboard. “What has changed the picture is the diesel generator,” says Kurzyca, “the longer the running period for a diesel generator, the quicker the payback for solar.”

My task was to determine exactly how long that payback period would be. I started by inviting Deutz, the respected German engine manufacturer, to send a representative, Craig Potts of CDDG Electrical Contractors, to my brother-in-law’s house to size up his needs. The following day, J.P. de Villiers, director of Eco Zone, performed the same exercise on behalf of the sun.

The difference between the mentality of a generator installer and a solar-cell contractor quickly becomes obvious. The genset man’s motto is: “Go big or go home.” Tumble driers, underfloor heating, pool pumps, ovens—put them all on the system. Bulking up from a 15 kVA generator to a 21 kVA model bumps the price up by less than 5 percent. Says Potts: “Rather go larger than smaller, that’s what I say.”

The meaning of life for a solar man, however, can be summed up as: “Every watt is sacred.” These panels are made from the same precious silicon crystals used for computer chips. Double the watts and you’ll have to double the price. De Villiers wanted to replace 59 halogen bulbs with 9-watt mini fluorescents. Such a conversion would cost nearly R10 000. He instantly ruled out using solar to power the pool pump, the oven, and the entire suite of appliances in the scullery. “The tumble drier takes 3 kilowatts, the dishwasher another 3 kilowatts, and the washing machine will use 500 watts on cold up to 3 kilowatts on hot,” he notes, “if you ran more than one of those at the same time, the system would come crashing down.”

Electric geysers, heaters and stoves are also beyond the might of photovoltaic panels. In most homes, de Villiers would like to see electric heat replaced by gas or wood, solar hot water panels mounted on the roof (R20 000 to R40 000 after Eskom’s rebate), and a gas stove installed in the kitchen (R5 000 and up), before adding sun power.

Since my brother-in-law powers his geysers, heaters and hob with town gas, he would be spared those up-front expenses. Still, he was becoming skeptical about the solar hassle factor. “I don’t want to have to know what is working and what is not working,” he moaned.

One conversation with the Deutz workshop convinced me that the diesel hassle factor is just as onerous, however. In addition to checking oil and coolant levels once a month, the engine would need a R2 000 service every 250 hours, more than once a year at current load-shedding levels. “And you must supply the oil; we don’t ride around with oil in our bakkies,” the foreman told me. Fuel deliveries would have to be organized several times a year.

In contrast, de Villiers said that his solar system could be left untouched for five years, at which time the batteries should be checked. With no moving parts, the Japanese-made panels’ power output is guaranteed for 20 years; the Deutz generator set’s warranty lasts for 24 months.

So neither side scored a technical knockout, and I had no doubt that the match between diesel and solar would ultimately be decided on points, or, more precisely, rands. And when the quotes came in, the opening round left solar slumping in the corner. Deutz was asking a fairly steep R162 000 for a 22 kVA generator set that would power the entire house, including installation and an automatic changeover panel that would start the motor whenever the electricity was cut. Sixteen roof-mounted Sanyo solar panels connected to a bank of batteries and an inverter, however, begged a whopping R322 000. This would provide continuous, clean power for lights, fans, security system, microwave, televisions, hi-fi, computers and peripherals, every day of the year—for free. Well, for R322 000, but for free.

The diesel quote was not entirely complete, however. Even with automatic changeover, the generator would take a minute or so to respond each time Eskom pulled the plug. Without uninterruptible power supply (UPS) battery backup on each computer, television decoder and clock, the house would still need a reboot.

And every home with a generator should have two layers of protection against voltage spikes according to Seamus Finnegan of Northern Technologies SA, which provides surge protection for generators to Vodacom and other telecoms operators. “If you don’t, you will have problems,” he warns. Steven Moss of Deutz says that the voltage regulators on his generators are adequate for most houses, unless they have “really sensitive or expensive equipment.” Playing it safe means adding another R23 000 to the diesel total.

The solar quote had room to move in the other direction. Replacing an aging refrigerator with a new, energy-efficient model could save two kilowatt hours a day. It might cost R10 000, but the payback would be instantaneous—knocking two R10 000-panels off the roof and six batteries out of the storeroom. Diesel still had the edge, R185 000 to R300 000, but solar was starting to find its feet.

The final rounds would be fought on a spreadsheet calculating operating costs and savings over the next 20 years. Of course I had to make some assumptions. Is load shedding going to get better or worse? I opted for slightly worse: 10 hours a week. If summer was unmanageable for Eskom, what happens when the underfloor heating is switched on? For diesel prices, I optimistically assumed 13 percent inflation, half the rate South Africans have endured for the last four years. And I allowed Eskom its 61 and 51 percent rate hikes for the first two years before applying the brakes and marking up annual increases of 15 percent.

The spreadsheet shows the solar panels gaining ground as the genset runs out of gas. By the end of the fifth year, cumulative fuel costs and maintenance bills have just about made up the R115 000 difference in the original price. Meanwhile, the solar panels would have saved my brother-in-law a running total of R34 000 on his municipal bill.

Starting out by opting for diesel and investing the R115 000 difference in an interest-bearing account instead of spending it on, say, plasma televisions, puts off the day of reckoning for the genset by a few years. But its defeat is inevitable.

From there, two scenarios confront his generator. Either load shedding continues to push the diesel engine deeper into deficit, or Eskom pulls out of its crisis and lands my brother-in-law with a rusting white elephant. Either way, the solar panels continue to save, finally paying for themselves about when the warranty expires.

Allow greenhouse gasses on the balance sheet and the generator sinks deep into the red. Over five years, one diesel generator operating just 10 hours a week to power a house will coat the atmosphere with more than 15 tons of carbon dioxide. That’s enough to blanket a one-acre property in a 2-metre-deep layer of the greenhouse gas. Over the same period, the solar panels would have reduced the home’s C02 contribution by double that amount.

Carbon dioxide suffocates the planet, not your children, but diesel particulates are one of the most dangerous air pollutants for human health. A report last year in the South African Medical Journal estimated that particulates in outdoor air pollution lead to 4,637 premature deaths in South Africa each year, largely from cancer, strokes and heart attacks. Measurements of particulate matter in major South African cities are on average more than triple the levels deemed safe to breathe.

While tightening emissions regulations are gradually cleaning up diesel cars in South Africa, the sky’s the limit for stationary engines belching particulates and smog-forming nitrogen oxides. Deutz engines, cleaner than most, do at least meet the European pollution standards of 12 years ago. Still, they can emit up to 5 times the levels of particulates allowed by the EU today. Had any regulator imagined that these engines would be running on a weekly basis in the gardens of family homes—in this case 8 metres away from my nieces’ treehouse—particulate filters would have been mandatory.

For now, winter is approaching and my brother-in-law still has not made his decision. Both quotes came in well above what he had anticipated, and the spreadsheet seems full of uncertainties. Besides, it’s hard to read all those figures in the dark.

The picture that I meant to take of Mandla

These are sad times in South Africa. And though I mostly feel quite distant from the terrible violence against our African neighbours, I have been touched by the tragedy in one, odd way.

For the past two years, a man name Mandla has rung my bell every Monday morning to see if I have any recyclables for him. I first saw him digging through garbage in my neighbourhood during one of my jogs. He was collecting white office paper, so I told him to stop by my house, since I always separate the good white stuff, which fetches a higher price. Ever since, he has made a weekly stop here. And as prices have risen for other commodities, I have given him cartloads of plastic bottles and cans in addition to paper.

I had just decided that it was time to write about Mandla on GreenerHouse. I liked the topic, because I believe that developing this kind of relationship creates meaning out of recycling, spares the collector the indignity and effort of digging through rubbish, and could save homeowners trips to the recycling depot. I had even decided that I would call the post “Meet Mandla.” I was going to take his picture and place it on the website.

It was going to be a good week for Mandla, because I had worked on the cleanup crew for my daughter’s matric dance and had rescued bins full of PET plastic bottles, aluminium cans and steel (tin) cans. I had them waiting at the gate for him. When Mandla didn’t show up last Monday, I didn’t think much of it. But now he hasn’t rung my bell for two weeks, so I know that last week was not a good week for Mandla. We had never discussed his origin; we mostly talked about the prices of various recyclable commodities. But it now seems clear that he was a Zimbabwean. In my experience, most of the hawkers who collect recyclables on foot are from other African nations.

I hope that Mandla is safe, wherever he is, and that someone is giving him lots of white paper to sell.

I cannot yet reprint my article on solar photovoltaics vs. diesel generators from Maverick magazine as long as the issue remains on the newsstand. But I can share a  few thoughts from what I have learned while reporting the article:

Prepare Ye the Way of the Panel. For years we’ve been promised that photovoltaic panels will come down in price as volumes increase. Well, volumes increased, but prices went up. Demand rocketed in Germany, Spain and elsewhere as governments made solar attractive financially. Solar-cell factories couldn’t be built fast enough to accommodate the new buyers, so the law of supply and demand took over. This is a temporary situation. As new factories are commissioned, prices will fall to not-yet-seen lows. If you’re feeling flush with cash and impatient, go ahead. Early adopters play a great role in advancing the acceptance of any new technology. But for most of us, it makes sense to wait, especially if the S.A. government implements a feed in tariff—like the one in Germany or Spain—which pays households for surplus solar electricity they feed into the grid.

In the meantime, there is plenty of work to do while getting your home ready for cheaper solar. Photovoltaics produce less electricity than you would expect. They belong in houses that already have low electricity consumption. Replace that old fridge. Install compact fluorescent light bulbs. Invest in a gas stove. Install a solar hot water panels, perhaps with gas back-up instead of electrical back-up for cloudy days. Consider space heating with gas or wood. And if you are doing any remodeling, plan a space in advance for batteries and an inverter. They need protection from the elements and ventilation, preferably in a location close to your circuit board.

It’s Your Health, Too. Burning more diesel is not just bad for the planet, it’s bad for you. Diesel fumes are known cancer-causing agents. Would you want your neighbour to idle his 1979 diesel Land Rover Defender in your driveway for several hours a day, spewing carcinogenic fumes toward your family? Running a diesel generator is no different.

You Get What You Pay For. People are always telling me that generators are cheap. And to look at the advertising inserts from D.I.Y. stores, you would think so. But some of these generators do not even have voltage regulators, leading to blown TVs. Even better generators with voltage regulators can create brief surges that are harmful to sensitive equipment. Seamus Finnegan of Northern Technologies SA recommends two layers of surge protection to protect against electrical current spikes as well as an uninterruptible power supply to keep computers operating during the lag between the beginning of load shedding and the start-up of the generator. “We see a lot of damage done by generators,” say Finnegan.

Heads Solar Wins, Tails Diesel Loses. Okay, maybe I’m biased, but diesel has problems under both scenarios facing South Africans. If load shedding becomes a serious regular occurrence, then the fuel expense begins to eclipse the upfront capital expense, and solar becomes more attractive financially. If Eskom gets its act together and load shedding ends, anyone who opted for solar still has a source of free, green energy. Those who bought a diesel generator are stuck with a rusting eye-sore.

The latest issue of Maverick magazine, which is arriving on newsstands this week, includes an article I wrote comparing diesel generators with solar photovoltaic panels. The point is that solar cells are normally considered pricey, with little hope of paying for themselves in the near term and maybe not even in the long run. Load shedding changed all that, however, because many South Africans are now shelling out tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars for diesel generators to make themselves Eskom-proof. In my article I compare what happens if that money is instead put into generating solar electricity on the roof. I use actual quotes for systems for one house and then run the numbers to see how the two options compare over time.

When this issue of Maverick comes off the newsstand, I will post the article in-full on GreenerHouse. In the meantime, I will share a few insights from my reporting here in the next few days.

Those Frogs Still Prefer CFLs

Yesterday in my daughter’s science class, the subject of energy efficiency came up, and another girl in the class mentioned that she had heard that our house was full of energy-saving devices. So my daughter had to explain what we were doing at home to save electricity. One boy asked if manufacturing those compact fluorescent light bulbs doesn’t use more electricity than making a common incandescent globe.

She didn’t know the answer. And neither did I. But I was glad that the younger generation thinks about the carbon footprint of the products we buy, and I thought it deserved a little research. After much digging, I came up with some information from Osram about the electricity that goes into making their bulbs.

Osram says that they need 3.36 kilowatt hours to produce each 15 watt CFL. This is about two-and-a-half times the amount of electricity required to make the equivalent 75 watt incandescent globe, 1.29 kilowatt hours. An incandescent bulb is a simpler product, after all. So the advantage goes to the incandescent on day one.

It loses the advantage quickly, however. If you use the two bulbs for four hours a day, by the 9^th day, the incandescent has used so much more electricity that it has lost its advantage. By the end of a year, my very rudimentary life-cycle analysis shows the CFL winning the race by 25.26 kWh to a whopping 110.79 kWh for the incandescent.

Even if you were burning these bulbs in Iceland, using carbon-dioxide-free geothermal and hydroelectric power, the CFL would be more environmentally friendly because it lasts longer and so one CFL is the equivalent of several incandescents.

If, like Noah, you know that the world is going to be swallowed up in a flood in a few days, an incandescent bulb is the green choice. If you think the flood might take a few more years as the Greenland ice cap melts, you should buy CFLs.

This week, my favourite little Rinnai gas heater stopped working when load shedding began on a cold night. It may use gas, but it also has an electric fan so it isn’t Eskom-proof. I’ve been looking at alternatives.

Last year at about this time, I wrote an overview of home heating options. In it, I ranked an open fireplace heated by gas 8th out of 11 options, well worse than average. This is because gas may burn cleanly, but any open fireplace loses most of its heat up the flue.

I failed to mention then that I own a Jetmaster open gas fireplace. In the past, I only used it a few times a year for ambience when we had guests, but I’ll have to use it a lot more during load shedding this winter since it’s my only heater that runs without electricity. That’s a problem, because LPG has risen in price from R367 for a 48 kg bottle when I installed the Jetmaster in 2001 to R820 now. And according to my own ranking, I’ll be using one of the least environmentally friendly options around.

When I first installed the Jetmaster, I briefly considered a wood stove, but I knew that wood burning was a source of carcinogenic particulates, and I didn’t see how wood made sense in a semi-arid country with so few trees.

I’ve learned two important things since then. First, I got a quick lesson in urban forestry a few years ago when I had to remove a giant dying oak from my garden. It broke my heart to see tons of potential firewood being carted away by a tree-feller who told me he was taking it to the dump. (The trunk and limbs were too large for me to split.) The logs would ultimately decompose, releasing greenhouse gasses without benefiting anyone. I called around and learned that some other tree-fellers cut and split the wood they retrieve to sell for firewood. In the future, I would only use a tree-feller who recycled this way.

Johannesburg is sometimes called the world’s largest urban forest. I suspect that this is hyperbole that could not be proven, but the fact is that the city creates enough firewood to heat many more local homes than it currently does. (Though not all of the homes, of course.)

The second education I received was when I began researching the latest wood stoves and fireplace inserts. They aren’t just better than open fireplaces, they are unrecognizably better. An open wood fireplace loses 90 percent or more of its heat up the chimney and releases about 50 grams of particulates per hour. Anyone who has read what I have writing about diesel emissions in the Mail & Guardian and on this website knows that particulates are a serious health risk.

But modern stoves typically emit 2 to 4 grams of particulates per hour, and some are closer to 1, that’s just 2% of the particulate pollution from a wood-burning open fireplace. And about a quarter of what a typical diesel car might produce. In addition, they retain 75 percent or more of the energy in the wood to heat the room, losing just a fraction to the flue. A free-standing stove unfortunately doesn’t suit my lounge, but the fireplace inserts are only a few percentage points less efficient and just as clean.

Perhaps most important, burning wood is widely considered to be almost carbon neutral, because a decaying dead tree would release carbon dioxide anyway, while a new tree growing in the place of the old one absorbs the greenhouse gas. Firewood from the urban forest is even closer to carbon neutral than most because it was going to be cut anyway and involves minimal transport.

Only two fireplace inserts fit my opening, but they seem like good units. I’m seriously considering the Scan DSA 3-5, which rates at 76 percent efficiency. I haven’t yet found particulate emissions data for this fireplace, but it seems similar to the DSA 4 which emits a very low 1.1 grams of particulates per hour. If I could choose among a wider range of wood stoves, I would look for one with the Swan eco-label. Among the brands in South Africa, Scan, Morsø, and Jötul all have stoves that meet the wide variety of environment criteria to earn the Swan logo. A list of Swan stoves can be found here.
These advanced, closed-combustion stoves are not cheap. Expect to pay at least R10 000, and up to R40 000 for a top-of-the-line wood burning stove. But the wood is cheap. Malcolm Sims of Cosy Heating has done calculations suggesting that gas now sells for R1.23 per kilowatt hour of energy, whereas wood is about 30 cents per kwh if burned in a 75 percent efficient stove-cheaper than electricity. (Cosy Heating sells both gas and wood heaters.) Comparing my inefficient Jetmaster with the Scan fireplace, I could heat with wood for one-tenth the price, though the Jetmaster offers greater control in adjusting the flame, which would mitigate that somewhat.

Sadly, Cosy Heating says that my Scan fireplace is out of stock because of the load-shedding rush. So for the next seven weeks we’ll be huddling next to the open gas fireplace when the lights go out, and thinking about how warm that chimney must be.