June, 16 2010, 06:52am EDT
Greenpeace Solar Powers World Cup Festivities
Today villagers in Jericho, a
village near Johannesburg, will gather around a specially constructed
Greenpeace Solar-powered Public Viewing Area to watch South Africa's
Bafana Bafana football team play against Uruguay.
JERICHO, South Africa
Today villagers in Jericho, a
village near Johannesburg, will gather around a specially constructed
Greenpeace Solar-powered Public Viewing Area to watch South Africa's
Bafana Bafana football team play against Uruguay.
The large screen TV powered by the sun has been placed in the Jericho
community hall. The entire set up is powered by solar panels and
generators, erected by schoolchildren, trained by Greenpeace for the
task. Greenpeace Africa kicked off this Thangkollo ya Solar (Solar
Kick Off) project to demonstrate the potential of renewable energy
sources in South Africa.
"What the Jericho project shows is that South Africa doesn't have to
rely on outdated methods to literally empower its people. The country
has some of the best renewable energy sources in the world in the form
of sun and wind," said Nkopane Maphiri, Greenpeace Africa's climate
campaigner.
"We want to make sure that South Africa doesn't commit a home goal by
not taking advantage of its renewable energy resources," Nkopane
Maphiri added.
Jericho's solar viewing screens are an example of Greenpeace's Energy
[R]evolution campaign in practice (1). A key area of the campaign is
about investment in people and local communities who can install and
maintain renewable energy sources.
"If it hadn't been for Greenpeace and solar power the football
festival might just have by passed us by," said Amos Nkotsi, a
community journalist who also took part in the solar workshop.
Although South Africa's government is talking about reducing its
carbon emissions, due to a power crisis, it has opted to invest in
more dirty coal and dangerous nuclear power. However, Greenpeace
believes that if the government embraces the Energy [R]evolution
pathway by investing in renewable energy and encouraging projects such
as the one in Jericho, then not only will it dramatically reduce its
carbon emissions, it could create 78 000 new direct jobs in the
renewable energy industry by 2030, far more than will be created in
the ailing coal mining industry.
If other African governments seize the opportunity to invest in a
greener future, 1.8 million green collar jobs would be created by 2030
and by 2050 over three quarters of the electricity produced in Africa
will come from renewable energy sources.
Key to making the Energy [R]evolution a reality is creating a system
in which investment costs for a renewable future, are shared fairly
under a global climate regime. One such mechanism, which could greatly
help Africa is the Greenhouse Development Rights framework (GDR),
which calculates national shares of global greenhouse gas obligations
based on a combination of responsibility (contribution to climate
change) and capacity (ability to pay).
Greenpeace is a global, independent campaigning organization that uses peaceful protest and creative communication to expose global environmental problems and promote solutions that are essential to a green and peaceful future.
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