Curiosity Issue 15

CONTENTS

6. The first to fuel the fire

8 FEATURE

Rolling blackouts: light at the end of the tunnel?

12 COLUMN

How do we spend $8.5bn correctly to energise and green SA?

14. Clean, safe… controversial: Nuclear energy

16. The red flags in green hydrogen

18. Your 8 quirky energy questions answered

20. Bridging the energy gap with AI

22. Building sustainable cities

24. Woodlands and forests con-tree-versial

body

42

32. Killing cancer with cryoablation

34. The energy it takes to navigate an ‘able-bodied’ world

36. The psychology of energy

38. A planet called home

40. Finding facts in a lightning bolt

42. Can Wits go off the grid?

44. Skills for a green world

45. `Clean coal´ – the unrecognised game-changing opportunity for SA

PROFILE

46. On ant(eater) patrol: Dr Wendy Panaino

48. Overcoming energy poverty

50. Educating science studentteachers about energy

52. Africa is getting hotter

54. COLUMN

Ensuring a just energy transition is complex. Here’s why…

56 COLUMN

A country worth fighting for

58. HISTORY

Sellschop’s neutrinos and an elusive energy

CONTENTS

ENERGISING AND FUTUREPROOFING OUR WORLD

climate change. But unless we reduce emissions to zero by 2050, there won’t be much of a planet to inhabit. So this is urgent – we need to transition to more sustainable energy systems that make use of solar, wind, and hydropower to mitigate the impacts of climate change. This will require significant investment and new innovative technologies.

At Wits University, we are always working to understand, evolve and solve the problems of our times with research that is locally relevant but that will make an impact on a global scale. This issue of Curios.ty has a wonderful mix of stories on the theme #ENERGY in all its various forms. Read about the development of PeCo grids, a modular system that can supply electricity to households and schools in rural areas using solar power and batteries that look like big Lego blocks! There are discussion papers on the pros and cons of green hydrogen and nuclear energy. Researchers at Wits are finding innovative ways to use coal optimally and minimise its impact on the environment by significantly reducing emissions.

The energy crisis in our country is devastating – we live in a state of energy poverty that threatens to destroy our economy and increase the levels of suffering and inequality. I am fortunate enough to live in a household that could afford a rooftop solar power system. Remarkably, during the day, we generate more power than we need, and I have become acutely aware of how many kilowatts each appliance uses. It has been a revelation and incredibly empowering to join the rapidly growing adopters of renewable energy.

But the energy crisis is not just a South African problem. Globally, we are in a catch-22 situation. We need to produce more and more energy to cater for the 9.7 billion people it’s estimated will be living on our planet in 2050. Currently most countries rely on dwindling supplies of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas that produce carbon emissions and contribute to

Curios.ty is a print and digital magazine that aims to make the research at Wits University accessible to multiple publics. It tells Wits’ research stories through the voices of its academics and postgraduate students. Curios.ty is issued three times per year and was first published in 2017. Each issue is thematic and explores research across faculties that relate to the theme. Issue 15 is themed #ENERGY. Our feature stories focus on SA’s energy crisis and energy in the body respectively. We explore the energy required by people with disabilities to navigate an able-bodied world, and investigate ‘alternative’ energies such as music and dance. We cover the nuclear, coal, and green hydrogen debates and answer eight quirky energy questions. We investigate the Online Learning Poverty Index, consider energy poverty, the energy divide, the digital divide, and the learning environment, and reveal how robots, artificial intelligence and machine learning can be used to tackle our energy crisis. We look into PeCo grids, a system that can supply electricity to households and schools in rural areas using solar power and batteries. Read about lightning, fire, woodland and forests as fuel, and how many ants a pangolin must eat to generate enough energy to survive.

Fire is a powerful source of energy that has shaped human history. South African palaeoscientists pioneered research into the first controlled use of fire – which remains a major energy source for many South Africans. There is a fascinating article on how robots, artificial intelligence and machine learning can be used to tackle our energy crisis, while a tool developed by a PhD candidate can measure students’ access to online learning. This tool, the Online Learning Poverty Index, considers energy poverty, the energy divide, the digital divide, and the learning environment, all of which can help with decision-making. In this issue, you can learn how many ants a pangolin needs to eat to generate enough energy to survive. There is an inspiring article on two Wits academics who paddled over 1 000km down one of the Amazon River’s largest tributaries to raise awareness of climate change.

But we need to do much more. We need to invest in GreenTech and use our collective expertise, wisdom, and passion to do research with impact. We need to green our campuses, which guzzles vast amounts of energy supporting laboratories and data centres. At Wits currently there are plans to install solar panels on every available rooftop, introduce electric buses, and build recycling plants. We need to create awareness among staff and students about energy conservation. We need to become energised about energy. Being energised fuels the creative process and propels innovation.

Professor Lynn Morris Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research and Innovation

Professor Lynn Morris

Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research and Innovation

Dr Robin Drennan

Director: Research Development

Shirona Patel

Head of Communications

Schalk Mouton

Senior Communications Officer and Curios.ty Editor

Deborah Minors

Senior Communications Officer and Curios.ty

Sub-Editor

Erna Van Wyk

Senior Multimedia Communications Officer and Curios.ty Digital Director

Chanté Schatz

Multimedia Officer and Curios.ty

Photographer

Tiisang Monatisa

Communications Officer

Senior Communications Officer

COVER DESIGN AND PICTURE EDITOR

Lauren Mulligan

LAYOUT AND DESIGN

Nadette Voogd

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All material in this publication is copyright and all rights are reserved. Reproduction of any part of the publication is permitted only with the express written permission of Shirona Patel, the Head of Communications of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. The views expressed in this publication are not necessarily the views of the University, nor its management or governance structures. ©2023

As a scientist, I know that energy cannot be created or destroyed, but as a person living in South Africa it feels like we are upending this fundamental law of physics.

Buhle Zuma

RESEARCHERS FEATURED

SAMSON BADA

Associate Professor Samson Bada is a Reader and the research leader in the Clean Coal Technology (CCT) Group in the School of Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering at Wits. His goal is to establish innovative solutions for the clean and responsible utilisation of South Africa’s coal and its derivatives. With over 15 years in CCT research, Bada has an extensive knowledge and understanding of how to match South Africa’s variable coal to a wide range of applications –specifically, use of coal/derivatives in energy and non-energy applications (sustainable feedstock in a circular economy and renewable space).

VICTOR DE ANDRADE

Dr Victor de Andrade is an audiologist and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology. He supervises Wits students on their clinical placements and works in the University’s Speech and Hearing Clinic. His interests span socio-cultural and contextual aspects of deafness; noise in learning environments; the experience of deafness including third-party disability, deafness, disability, sexuality, and assistive technologies. He has been invited to advise and consult on deafness and assistive technologies to the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and others.

TRACY-LYNN FIELD

Professor of Law, Tracy-Lynn Field is an enrolled advocate and the Claude Leon Foundation Chair in Earth Justice and Stewardship at the Mandela Institute at Wits. Her research expertise includes environmental law, human rights, mining law, climate change law, water law, extractives industry transparency, mineral property regimes, mineral taxation regimes, and open government. She was part of a closed meeting of experts convened by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Environment to consider the global, formal recognition of the human right to environment.

LESEDI MASISI

Dr Lesedi Masisi is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Electrical and Information Engineering at Wits. His research is in the field of rotating electric machines, drives, power electronics, and the electrification of transportation. Masisi is

the Curriculum Chair in the School, and he developed a postgraduate diploma course in electric and hybrid vehicles at Wits. He is a council member of the South African Institute of Electrical Engineers and a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. He holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Concordia, Montreal, Canada.

PRESHA RAMSARUP

Dr Presha Ramsarup is the Director of the Centre for Researching Education and Labour (REAL) in the Wits School of Education. Her research relates to skills development towards a sustainable, just world. Ramsarup has worked on several just transition related programmes, focusing on learning pathways into green jobs and more specifically the greening of traditional jobs as the world of work changes. Her current research explores methodologies to articulate demand for green jobs at employer level and understanding the methodologies to identify skills needed to support a just transition.

BERENEICE SEPHTON

Dr Bereneice Sephton completed her PhD in the Structured Light Lab at Wits University in 2022. Her doctorate is in experimental quantum optics where she twisted and changed the colour of light, from bright lasers to photons, to teleport patterns of light in high dimensions aimed at breaking dimensional barriers. Sephton is now pursuing postdoctoral studies in Naples, Italy, where she continues to play with particles of light to exploit its features for high-dimensional quantum technologies.

IYABO USMAN

Professor Iyabo Usman is the group leader of the Nuclear Structure Research Group in the School of Physics. Her research area in nuclear physics include nuclear-structure, radiation, forensics, and reactor physics. Usman serves as reviewer for the Journal of Radiation Physics and Chemistry and the Journal of Radiation Research and Applied Sciences, and she is the regional editor of the African Physics Newsletter. She holds the industrial liaison portfolio at the Council of South African Institute of Physics, and she chairs the Transformation Committee in the Faculty of Science at Wits.

BRUCE YOUNG

Dr Bruce Young is a Senior Lecturer in the Africa Energy Leadership Centre (AELC) at Wits Business School. He holds a PhD in chemical engineering from Wits and spent some 30 years at Sasol. He has significant experience in the petrochemical industry relating to liquid fuels and chemicals, technology development, process commercialisation, technology licensing, intellectual property, mergers and acquisitions, strategy, and business development. He joined the AELC in April 2022.

TRACY-LYNN FIELD LESEDI MASISI

IYABO USMAN BRUCE YOUNG

SAMSON BADA VICTOR DE ANDRADE

PRESHA RAMSARUP BERENEICE SEPHTON

FIRE

The first fuel that enabled human beings to land on the moon was harnessed right here in Africa.

CHANTÉ SCHATZ

The history of fire is something of a smokescreen, as researchers have not been able to pinpoint the exact period in which it was first used. Nevertheless, its enduring power dating from millions of years ago has not gone unnoticed in the crevices of the Earth’s surface.

“The earliest evidence of fire in the literature is 1.6 million years ago and is recorded in a site in Kenya in the Turkana basin, although this is controversial, because not everybody accepts that date,” says Professor Francis Thackeray, a palaeoanthropologist in the Evolutionary Studies Institute (ESI) at Wits University.

BRAIN AND BURNT BONES

One of the earliest discoveries of the use of controlled fire was made in the 1970s. That’s when palaeontologist Charles ‘Bob’ Brain excavated burnt bones in deposits thought to be about one million years old inside the Swartkrans cave located in the Cradle of Humankind, northwest of Johannesburg, South Africa.

“Brain was very meticulous. He studied bones that had been blackened and after chemical analysis found that the temperature of the fire was in the order of 700 degrees Celsius. You don’t get this kind of temperature from grass fires. A veld fire can be quick and burns at a relatively low temperature of about 200 degrees,” says Thackeray.

The presence and distribution of these burnt bones recovered from Member 3 in the cave was claimed to be the earliest direct evidence for use of fire by hominids on record.

FIRE AND FOSSILS

In a new discovery, Lee Berger, Professor in the Wits Centre for Exploration of the Deep Human Journey, and his team, have determined that Homo naledi, dating back to the Middle Pleistocene 335 000-236 000 years ago, used fire for lighting in the Rising Star Cave System.

The fossils of Homo naledi lay deep underground in a seemingly inaccessible dark chamber. The question of how they could have got there, far in the dark zone, has been a continuing mystery. Now the team has found a possible answer: evidence of fire throughout the cave. Berger examined the ceiling and realised that there was clear evidence of soot from ancient fires.

“We were blind to the evidence of fire, but once our eyes were opened, we saw that it was there throughout the cave system. It was everywhere,” says Berger.

FLAME-GRILLED FRUITS

Fire in prehistory was discovered in various cave systems in southern Africa including the Wonderwerk Cave in the Northern Cape, Klasies River in the Eastern Cape, as well as the Border Cave in KwaZulu-Natal.

Professor Lyn Wadley in the ESI found the earliest example of fire used for cooking at the Border Cave, which was first occupied at least 227 000 years ago, although its earlier occupation has not yet been dated.

“Right from the beginning of human occupation in Border Cave, people were lighting fires and cooking meat. From about 170 000 years ago, people in Border Cave were also collecting edible Hypoxis rhizomes [underground stems of a genus of flowering plants] that were transported to the cave for cooking and sharing,” says Wadley. “This is the earliest known evidence anywhere of the cooking of plants, but of course the practice may have been earlier.”

Today, Homo sapiens is the only species that has been able fully to master fire. As Thackeray explains: “Without the controlled use of fire, it would not be possible to power a rocket. Without a rocket, it would not be possible to go to the moon. So, in a sense, the first small technological that led to the giant leap of lunar exploration, began here in South Africa.” C

Border Cave excavation

Roch Hearth Rising Star Chamber

Small Hearth Burnt Bone Dragons Back Chamber

Lucinda Backwell

ROLLING BLACKOUTS: LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL?

South Africa’s next move in the power generation rigmarole could create a new model for many countries facing power shortages. But it could also lead to more muddling in the dark, writes Ufrieda

Ho.

South Africans by now all know that the state power utility, Eskom, is in a dizzying death spiral and that the country looks set for more years of power cuts. But rock bottom is about as good a place as any to start finding a way for SA to crawl out of this mess.

The reality and outrage around Stage 6 rolling blackouts have come with sober reckoning of how South Africa ended up in the deadening abyss of a power crisis, now veering towards collapse.

Reckoning continues after a summer of the worst loadshedding in the country to date, and as more of the web of state capture – as set out in the Zondo Commission’s report – reveals the extent of corruption, looting, and sabotage at the state-owned power utility.

POWER IN THE ‘90S

There have also been years of systematic stripping of technical and management capacity, while none of the appropriate skills transfer and development necessary for continuity and growth at the utility was done.

Analysts have tracked this slide at Eskom as far back as Thabo Mbeki’s presidency in the late 1990s. The ANC’s priority of politicking, rather than governing competently, compromised the development and strategic investment needed to ensure a robust and durable energy generation plan.

The bleak picture of Eskom’s slide to rot leaves the country’s ‘what next?’ in terms of power supply looking like more of the same loadshedding nightmare, and with it the devastating impacts on the economy and people’s day to day lives. At some point, a plan of action needs to kick in.

STATE OF EMERGENCY, INCENTIVES, PENALTIES

That ‘some point’, says Professor Rod Crompton, should have arrived by 2022 already. Crompton, who is Visiting Adjunct

Professor in the Wits Business School’s African Energy Leadership Centre and a long-serving non-executive member of the Eskom board, says declaring a state of emergency is a first step.

“It’s a short-term measure of an ‘all hands on deck’ approach in which all citizens are involved in dealing with the electricity crisis,” says Crompton.

He says thousands of small solar power stations – from those in private homes and small businesses, to commercial and industrial enterprises – should be supplying surplus power to the grid to lessen the burden of loadshedding. “This can be further ramped up through tax incentives and reviving electricity substitution initiatives that have gone quiet,” he says.

One such initiative is the liquid petroleum gas (LPG) programme, which the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE) announced in April 2021.

The programme was meant to transform the sector to allow for more small, black-owned enterprises to enter the LPG supply chain, and looked to target increased household LPG use for cooking and heating.

“A rapid introduction of tax incentives and VAT exemptions for all kinds of power-generating equipment, from tiny to industrial scale, would be a big help. The DMRE’s initiatives could have also seen VAT exemptions on gas cookers and cylinders,” says Crompton.

Another measure is for decisive action to be taken against electricity theft and non-payment of services. Things such as tipoff hotlines, reward schemes, and swift convictions and penalties for perpetrators could help.

“The more government gets out of the way and allows the market to operate, the sooner we will see an end to loadshedding and a return to reliable supply.”

SHEDDING LIGHT LONG-TERM

The longer ter m strategy to claw out of the electricity pit, however, requires a different kind of action. Crompton explains that while Eskom has a so-called ‘nine-point plan’ targeted at its generation facilities, its maintenance budget and technical and management competences are depleted.

“Some parts have to be ordered two years in advance of a planned maintenance shutdown, which requires detailed mechanical and financial planning – all difficult to do as unplanned maintenance has to be carried out as breakdowns happen,” he says.

Ultimately, state control and ownership at all levels of government must be removed from power infrastructure. However, this is easier said than done given the broken body politic in South Africa.

“The more government gets out of the way and allows the market to operate, the sooner we will see an end to loadshedding and a return to reliable supply,” says Crompton. “However, markets require rules and policing too, and the skills in government to draft such rules are few and far between. There’s also political antagonism from some quarters towards such a dispensation. The fact is skills exist outside of government and there are many willing to help. If only government would accept the help that it needs.”

The wake-up calls from the loadshedding crisis of this summer are as follows:

• Remove political interference

• Remove state control of strategic infrastructure

• End reliance on large, centralised power generation

• Invest in appropriate technologies sooner

• Skills development and deployment of the right people to do the job

• Shore-up accountability, transparency, and clearer communication to the public.

NEW DESIGNS ON POWER

Eskom, which Crompton say is in “a death spiral”, can’t recover because it’s now an expensive relic. It is still in the process of

being unbundled into three separate entities, which has been on the cards for years. In 2017, the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA) laid a complaint with the Competition Commission challenging Eskom’s monopoly in the electricity market and called for a separation of Eskom’s management and control of the grid from its generating activities.

Professor Imraan Valodia, Pro Vice-Chancellor: Climate, Sustainability and Inequality, says South Africa must look to creating a flexible model for power generation. “We no longer need a big monopoly for power generation like Eskom. The technology and price of renewables are dropping fast; there are also all sorts of new entrants into the markets, but we have to open up the system so they can be part of the model,” he says.

‘ELECTRICOMPLEXITY’ – WHO GAINS, WHO LOSES?

Valodia believes there needs to be a different design of state regulation and control. “The power distribution system is not something that you want in private sector hands, because you want the state to make sure that the grid is producing and pushing electricity to those who need it, so that should be owned by the public. But it needs to be a model that allows for different types of power generation to become part of the energy mix easily.”

He adds that there’s also a need for the rapid scaling up of renewable energies; advancing research and development into overcoming existing challenges like ensuring reliable, long-term storage of energy from renewables; decentralising power generation; and improving integration of systems. This, crucially, has to extend to reckoning with the fuller impact of how generation and consumption of energy impacts the environment and the most vulnerable in society. Control and access to electricity and energy still comes down to the divides between the haves and the have-nots, locally and globally, says Valodia.

“In South Africa we have had very cheap energy for years, but it is because we have never counted the cost to the environment, to emissions and global warming, and to people’s health,” says Valodia. “There’s also the ongoing debate between the Global North and the Global South of why countries in the north, which are the world’s biggest polluters, don’t want countries in Africa to invest in fossil fuel industries, even though they have happily been using oil and gas for generations,” he says, emphasising the complexity of the story of electricity – which is also about who stands to gain and who are the losers.

OPPORTUNITIES IN CRISES

For Willie Cronje, Professor in the School of Electrical and Information Engineering, there are opportunities that will come from walking away from Eskom. “As it is, Eskom will never be able to catch up on the political folly that led to lost decades of missed maintenance and strategic investment,” he says. “Eskom ran up

a deficit over the years and now too much damage has been done. But this crisis creates new demands and new opportunities, for those who are providing solar power panels or inverters, for instance, so this is a new growth industry.”

Cronje’s research focuses on smarter micro-grids. These are what he calls ‘stackable systems’ that start with individual rooftop solar, connect to become neighbourhood systems and then become city-wide grids. They’re small but flexible.

He echoes Crompton’s and Valodia’s sentiments that the time of centralised power is over. “Mega level energy generation means things can become mega mess-ups,” he says. Cronje points out that South Africa’s loadshedding – ostensibly a way to manage electricity distribution to avert a total power breakdown in the country – has made the country a high profile “case to watch”. Many other countries also face looming energy crises, exacerbated by the knock-on effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a year ago.

“Worldwide, electricity infrastructure has been ageing, so the shortages of energy are being felt across the globe. So, in a strange way, South Africa is ahead of the curve, and we are starting to see people coming to South Africa to see how we deal with this crisis,” says Cronje.

It’s another reason why our ‘what next?’ must be light at the end of the tunnel and not more muddling in the dark. C

“Mega level energy generation means things can become mega mess-ups.”

HOW DO WE SPEND $8.5BN CORRECTLY TO ENERGISE AND GREEN SA?

Andrew Lawrence in the

School of Governance explores how funding received from the Just Energy Transition Partnership can most benefit

Dr

Wits

South Africa.

The Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP)’s $8.5 billion (R152 billion) sounds like a lot, but it’s a fraction of what is needed to get South Africa firmly on the path to a more sustainable energy and climateresilient system. To meet its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) alone requires four times this amount per year for the next 15 years.

THE ‘BUILD BACK BETTER’ CONUNDRUM

The best policies lay the groundwork to ‘build back better’ politically (via transparent and participatory implementation), economically (avoiding financial risk and debt), socially (ending energy poverty and social marginalisation), and ecologically (reducing emissions and other harmful impacts). These are not inevitable trade-offs, but rather different facets of the same sustainability strategy that can maximise decent job growth. When trust in government is at an all-time low, the political facet becomes all the more important.

Current plans address some of these goals better than others. Rapid decommission of aging, malfunctioning coal generation infrastructure now enjoys broad consensus. This is (hard-earned) progress; as recently as 2020, some were still arguing that – unlike coal, supposedly – wind and solar “cannot be relied on to produce electricity whenever it is needed” (ignoring the question of storage, about which, more below).

Since then, the price the country has paid for not transitioning to renewable sources sooner and more decisively has been more than 2 000 hours of loadshedding, costing the economy hundreds of billions of Rands. Both as a means of generation, and as a nexus of unaccountable corruption, coal can no longer ‘be relied on’ by South Africans needing secure and affordable electricity.

REFITTING TARIFFS AND INFRASTRUCTURE

Most of the JETP spending ($7.6 billion) is for electricity infrastructure, which might make sense, but how it is built and who will finance and own it remain open questions.

The Zuma government’s decision to jettison its proposed Renewable Energy Feed-in Tariff (REFIT), which placed an obligation on Eskom to purchase the output from qualifying renewable energy generators at pre-determined prices, was opaque and never convincingly argued. Had the REFIT remained, it may well have more than paid for itself in terms of avoided loadshedding, cheaper electricity, and increased capacity, compared to the actual Renewable Independent Power Producer Programme (REIPPP) implementation.

DIVERSIFY TO EMPOWER PEOPLE

Twenty-nine municipal Feed-in Tariffs, though modest, show what’s already possible. More ambitiously, progressive tariffs could promote cooperative, municipal- or communityowned infrastructure, thereby providing a major incentive to maximise small-scale generation and so also renewable energy employment, while helping to strengthen the grid.

Progressive tariffs could also help to finally achieve 100% electricity access for rural areas and informal settlements; targeting these and other low-income households generally achieves the biggest welfare gains, with each Rand spent on a distributed energy subsidy yielding more than a Rand in economic benefit. Diversifying sources also helps reduce retail electricity prices, provided policies are designed transparently with meaningful public input.

PROMOTE BIOGAS

Budgeting $700m for ‘green’ hydrogen is more debatable. Sceptics rightly question how ‘green’ this hydrogen ends up being, since the temptation and practice is to blend it with fossil-fuel derived sources. Supporters tout its capacity to “decarbonise highly polluting and hard-to-abate sectors, such as cement, steel, and glass”.

But a closer look at the actual deals signed at COP27 shows that the overwhelming focus is on mining: Anglo’s H2 Valley/ Mining Trucks, and to a lesser extent, an ArcelorMittal direct reduced iron (DRI) plant. Most of this output will likely be for exported rather than for local use, and mostly of ore (including coal) rather than higher value-added manufacturing.

Rather than hydrogen, or (even worse) off-shore gas drilling, which endangers coastal economies and ecologies, better options include gravity-based storage, as well as promoting SA’s nascent biogas industry, with a 2.5 gigawatt potential capacity that would be cost-competitive with true green hydrogen, create thousands of jobs, reduce fertiliser needs, waste removal and landfill costs, and provide a more secure source of methane for peaking plants.

ELECTRIFY SA’S MINIBUS TAXIS

Regarding the $200m for electric vehicles (EVs), much of the potential benefit depends on how this is spent. Apart from in-sourcing as much of the EV value chain as possible, there are opportunities for improving the local transport landscape, while using EVs as another grid storage solution.

Electrification of SA’s minibus taxi fleet (the mode of transport for two thirds of SA households) together with vehicle-to-grid (V2G) infrastructure, costing about this amount, would achieve these goals by providing more than five gigawatt hours of storage capacity, almost twice the current capacity of all of South Africa’s pumped storage (which should also be expanded). The older replaced taxis could be used for under-served rural areas.

GREEN CREDIT POLICIES FOR BIG DOLLAR DEBTS

Critics of the JETP observe correctly that most of the funding ($5.3 billion) is in dollar-denominated loans with increasingly steep interest rates, not grants. Since the Rand predictably depreciates against the dollar, such loans end up costing much more.

South Africa already has the eighth highest balance sheet exposure to the dollar (due to its reserves to short-term external debt ratio, and to relatively large foreign holdings of local debt) – this is a major concern. Far better would be to adopt allocative green credit policies (including reserve requirement adjustments, Special Drawing Rights, and allocative credit policies) that leverage local financial market actors to pursue more ambitious goals, like ‘in-sourcing’ the whole value chain of major renewable energy components – photo voltaic manufacture, wind turbines, and batteries – for more sustained employment and export growth. C

Dr Andrew Lawrence is a Visiting Research Scholar in the Wits School of Governance. He has written extensively on energy and climate politics, comparative and global political economy, and worker and employer collective action, with recent articles in Competition and Change, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, and Review of International Political Economy. His books include South Africa's Energy Transition (Palgrave, 2020) and Employer and Worker Collective Action (Cambridge University Press, 2014).

CLEAN SAFE…

CONTROVERSIAL

Nuclear energy has had a bad rap, but in South Africa’s current energy conundrum, its importance in the mix is clear.

BETH AMATO

The catastrophic accident at Chernobyl in Ukraine in the mid-1980s, popularised in a recent television series, made nuclear energy a controversial subject. The magnitude of the potential destruction of nuclear energy, should human error or a reactor breakdown occur, is uncomfortable to comprehend. The images of mass evacuation, severe injuries, and lingering radioactivity are burnished in the popular imagination.

Nuclear energy is a form of energy released from interactions of neutron with fissionable heavy to produce energy with other unstable fission products in a controlled nuclear power reactor.

A major environmental concern related to fission nuclear power is the creation of radioactive wastes and its storage, which might cause health effects to exposed individuals.

Safety techniques have, however, been mostly addressed by the International Atomic Energy Agency through newer generation reactors. Reactors are the devices that control nuclear fission to release nuclear energy.

In South Africa, low-level radioactive nuclear waste is safely disposed of in a desolate area of the Northern Cape. However, in this country, public mistrust of nuclear energy ‘deals’ persists.

IN BED WITH THE REDS?

Honorary Professor of International Relations, John Stremlau, is wary of the Russian influence on South Africa’s nuclear sector. “My main problem with nuclear, aside from the weapon development focus during the apartheid regime, was the constitutional challenge that Zuma’s dodgy deal with Putin (Rosatom) posed. This deal was agreed for R1 trillion without financial vetting.” Rosatom is a Russian state corporation headquartered in Moscow that specialises in nuclear energy, nuclear non-energy goods and high-tech products.

In addition, a visit from Russia’s foreign minister to South Africa, where “cooperation in nuclear energy was a prominent item on the bilateral agenda”, casts a nefarious light on nuclear energy, notes Stremlau.

Misguided politics and poor infrastructure aside, nuclear energy has been unfairly cast as the poor cousin in the energy mix family, particularly in South Africa. So says Professor Iyabo Usman who leads the Nuclear Structure Research Group (NSRG) in the School of Physics. She asserts that nuclear’s potential to help fix South Africa’s electricity crisis is significant.

“Nuclear energy generation in South Africa is through Koeberg’s two-unit reactor nuclear power plant. This supplies Eskom with about 5% of its yearly electricity generation. There is potential for so much more in South Africa and across the continent,” says Usman.

NUCLEAR SETBACKS

Koeberg is the only nuclear power station in Africa and has been in operation since 1984, with a planned operating life set at 40 years. But work to extend Koeberg’s life until around the year 2045 has stalled. The most fundamental elements – the steam generators – have not been replaced, causing significant delays.

The Pebble-Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) was South Africanowned technology commissioned in the early 2000s. This would have been tremendously useful in supplying electricity, but

bizarrely, work on the PBMR also stalled in 2012 owing to lack of funding. “The Integrated Resource Plan explicitly states that modular reactors would add a further 2 500 megawatts to the grid. Therefore, work must start now in resurrecting this technology, considering that building up nuclear capacity takes a lot of time,” says Usman, who asserts that everything depends on how quickly the government responds.

SOUTH AFRICA REMAINS WEDDED TO COAL

It’s not surprising that the upgrade of Koeberg is beset with issues, embedded in the broader context of Eskom’s relentless reliance on ageing coal fleets, which currently supply most of the country’s electricity. In 2022, the country had 200 days of loadshedding, profoundly affecting society and the economy.

“We’re in a good position to have a broader energy mix. Nuclear power – being a clean and efficient energy source – is a critical part of this diverse mix. Indeed, nuclear energy can aid economic growth across all sectors. But the current shortfalls owing to Eskom’s over-reliance on coal means loadshedding will continue indefinitely,” says Usman.

She explains that there is nothing wrong with nuclear energy generation but worries about the faltering infrastructure that inhibits efficient transmission and distribution. “It’s a wider problem of corruption, mismanagement, sabotage, and lack of maintenance of the electricity grid itself. Yes, we have the ability to generate extra nuclear power, but we are at the whims of a bigger energy system, sadly. In addition, we are losing vital skill as scientists are leaving for greener pastures, particularly to the United Arab Emirates.”

NUCLEAR FOR SA’S JUST TRANSITION

Eskom has advocated for the expansion of nuclear energy to assist South Africa to achieve its climate change goals that were set by the Paris Agreement. At the 2022 COP26 climate summit, the US agreed to give South Africa $8.5 billion to enable us to shift to a low-carbon economy. “Nuclear energy is important to achieve many of the Sustainable Development Goals. One of these goals is affordable and clean energy,” notes Usman.

Small modular reactors could be the ticket. Usman explains that small-scale modular nuclear power projects, that include land and marine water-cooled reactors, are a more suitable alternative to large power stations like Koeberg. “Using small modular reactors, we can without a doubt transition to a low-carbon economy. Furthermore, they are cost effective, don’t need a lot of space, and can be built in three years. The resultant nuclear supply can add to the energy mix, reduce loadshedding and ultimately, boost our economy,” says Usman. C

“Nuclear energy has been unfairly cast as the poor cousin in the energy mix family, particularly in South Africa.”

THE RED FLAGS IN GREEN HYDROGEN

Scientists can do better to take industry and government-driven hype out of green hydrogen so that its actual potential can be realised.

Green hydrogen’s outsized promise to meet the world’s decarbonisation agenda, while being a reliable fuel that keeps Big Industry’s growth targets on track, is dazzling. But experts caution that the dazzle is distraction and questions need to be asked about how much of green hydrogen’s promise is oversell, and how much is actual potential.

Hydrogen is a gas that has no colour, odour, or taste. It is a very simple element because its atom has only one proton in its nucleus. Green hydrogen is defined as hydrogen produced by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen using renewable electricity.

A GAP FOR GREEN

South Africa, like many other countries, has joined the green hydrogen rush, pinning hopes on this being a so-called “big

frontier”, as President Cyril Ramaphosa called it, for a just energy transition. Ramaphosa said at that Green Hydrogen Summit in November 2022 that green hydrogen has “huge growth and investment potential as demand for green hydrogen products around the world increases.”

For green hydrogen to deliver on its promise means it must significantly help meet the world’s recognised target to reduce carbon emissions by 45% by 2030, and to be at net zero by 2050. This is what scientists say is needed if the planet is to have a chance to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.

To date, the route to curbing carbon emissions has centred on renewable energies such as solar and wind. But key challenges persist around scale, intermittent supply, and long-term energy storage. These shortcomings have opened a gap for green hydrogen.

UFRIEDA HO

A DIRTY RAINBOW

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, with green hydrogen promising to be clean burning, more efficiently stored, and transportable. Add to this a mighty push from oil and gas monopolies (which still control all grades of hydrogen production) and green hydrogen has been elevated to a star role to stave off the climate catastrophe. But there are catches.

Hydrogen production is only considered “green” when it is produced through water electrolysis from electricity that’s fuelled from renewable sources – such as wind and solar. Hydrogen production follows a rainbow of grades with green hydrogen at one end, and grey and black hydrogen, which is produced from burning fossil fuels, at the other “dirty” end. This means that green hydrogen production is contingent on a solid renewable energy framework that has surplus supply.

Dr Bruce Young is a Senior Lecturer in the African Energy Leadership Centre at Wits Business School and has worked in the petro-chemical business for decades. Young says that green hydrogen has been too hastily cast as the “saviour to our energy woes – a Swiss army knife of energy transition, which can be used for so many things”. He is doubtful that the green hydrogen hype matches its touted potential for all these applications. There are often better alternatives for many of these applications, particularly the direct use of renewable electricity.

VOLUME, LEAKS, STORAGE LIMITATIONS

Green hydrogen’s limitations, Young outlines, are that the current production volume is “very small”, with most hydrogen produced being of the carbon-intensive grey and black hydrogen variety.

Green hydrogen also needs conversion to higher energy density products, such as ammonia, so it can be stored and transported over long distances, and to be cost effective – Young says that mega green hydrogen production plants have capital costs in the billions of dollars, and protracted timeframes over decades.

In addition, there is hydrogen leakage to contend with. Hydrogen, being the smallest molecule, is prone to leakage and in the atmosphere, it acts as an indirect greenhouse gas, adding to global warming.

“Green hydrogen technology has no meaningful installed capacity and will take decades to scale up, to refine, and to make it efficient at a multi-gigawatt scale. Currently, the first gigawatt scale pioneering project planned in Saudi Arabia will begin production only in 2026 and it will inevitably have its own start-up issues, as is inherent in pioneering plants.”

BURIAL AND BLUE HYDROGEN

Young says that the oil industry is proposing the use of blue hydrogen as an interim measure. This involves burying the carbon dioxide produced by grey hydrogen production underground, using carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.

“Bold forecasts have been made about CCS technology in the past, which have not materialised, and it is costly with only a small number of projects in operation worldwide,” says Young.

More pertinent, Young says the renewed attention on green hydrogen should raise questions of who stands to gain from a green hydrogen boom, taking into consideration the consequences of clouded decision-making and poor investment choices for energy transition plans – South Africa’s included.

“The oil and gas industry has a strong vested interest in promoting green hydrogen to try and ensure their survival. Using hydrogen as a fuel fits with the oil companies’ current business model – they control the fuel production, supply and the wholesale and retail distribution of hydrogen fuel,” Young says.

COMMODIFYING ENERGY

The benefits of green hydrogen, in real terms, come down to appropriate applications. It’s a good choice for nitrogenous fertiliser production, hydrogenation and desulphurisation, for example, but not for domestic heating, jet fuels, or running cars, for which better alternatives exist.

Similar warnings come from Dr Neil Stacey, a Lecturer in the School of Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering. Stacey calls for vigilance, pointing out that the incentives of the major stakeholders do not align with the public interest.

“Energy, in most of its forms, is a centrally controlled commodity produced by a handful of companies and regulated by governments for which energy access is a powerful political tool. Renewable energy disrupts that paradigm by democratising energy access, threatening major sources of revenue and political power. Major corporations and governments share an incentive to either prevent that shift or steer it in a direction that favours their vested interests. And, in the current environment of social media, the tools for influencing public opinion are more potent than ever before,” Stacey says.

RENEWABLE ENERGY REQUIRED

In November 2022, the South African government announced a R300-billion investment pipeline as part of the country’s Green Hydrogen National Programme. Ramaphosa said then that South Africa could produce up to 13 million tonnes of green hydrogen and derivatives by 2050 but would need 300 gigawatts of renewable energy. According to the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), as of 2021, renewable energy contribution to installed capacity in the country stood at 5.7 gigawatts and contributed to 6.6% of the country’s total energy mix.

Even the pioneering plant in Saudi Arabia (which bills itself as what will be the largest plant to produce green hydrogen in the world) expects at full operation to produce 600 tonnes of carbon-free hydrogen a day. In a year that would be just over 200 000 tonnes. To get to Ramaphosa’s 13 million tonnes, at its expected output rate in 2026, would take this mega plant around 60 years to achieve.

For Stacey this “overhyping and over-investment in hydrogen” also has the effect of co-opting research capacity into hydrogen and away from other renewable energy innovations, including on recycling technologies to ensure renewable energy equipment doesn’t end up in landfills at the end of its life.

RESEARCH REDIRECTION RISKS

“There is a risk of academia becoming an extension of government and corporate interests, rather than a balance against them. Scientists are incentivised to obtain funding and to get their work published and cited, and that means playing along rather than ringing alarm bells,” says Stacey.

The big numbers quoted need more unpacking, and it also means that South Africa’s credit from concessional loans for the just energy transition plan cannot be squandered.

“In the best-case scenario, South Africa uses the money to move more swiftly to neat, elegant solutions, like widespread rooftop solar and a good basket of energies that may be high on capital investment but are low on operating costs,” says Stacey.

In his worst-case scenario, more people remain without access to electricity in South Africa and generational debt sets in.

“It comes down to making good sensible choices where we match the supply of energy to its demand and we ensure that no one gets left behind,” Stacey says. C

YOUR QUIRKY ENERGY 8

QUESTIONS ANSWERED

1. CAN A LIGHT SABRE ACTUALLY WORK?

Sorry to burst your sci-fi monster-slaying fantasy bubble, but the science doesn’t add up. There are two fundamental issues with the fictional energy sword used in Star Wars:

The first is that light never stops; it’s always moving at the speed of light. A light sabre suggests that the light leaves the source and then abruptly comes to a stop at the end of the sabre.

The second issue is that science-fiction imagines that the laser light is very powerful. In fact, lasers are highly inefficient, maybe converting 10% of electrical power into light. So, for a highpower laser, you need even more power at the source – a small power station, in fact (and we know we can’t rely on Eskom). Now imagine the light sabre in your hand, but with a cable connecting it to a very big power supply – not terribly awe-inspiring.

There are some tricks to try and get around these issues, such as using more efficient sources of laser light and using interference to make the light seem to disappear at the desired end of the sabre, but, so far, no one has made a working light sabre. – Distinguished Professor Andrew Forbes, Structured Light Lab, answers questions 1 and 2.

2. IS LEVITATION POSSIBLE?

We can’t promise that you’ll rise and float in the air from your own sheer will without physical support, but levitation is possible

using very mature technology. You need a force pushing upwards to balance gravity pulling downwards. In fun arcades this is done by strong fans pushing air upwards. Another way to do this is with magnetism, and in fact you can buy toys that levitate magnets over magnets. On an industrial scale, the Japanese were the first to levitate trains – this removes friction so that the trains can go faster. Sir Michael Berry won an Ig Nobel prize for levitating a frog, and famously concluded his fun paper by promising one day to levitate himself!

3. WHY DO YOU GET HOT IF YOUR BODY TEMPERATURE IS 36°C BUT THE AIR TEMPERATURE IS 30°C?

The normal core body temperature range can vary between individuals and can also be influenced by age, activity, and time of day. It generally ranges from 36.1°C to 37.2 °C.

Your skin is much cooler than your core body temperature because your skin is continually exchanging heat with your surroundings. We are continuously generating metabolic heat and we need to dissipate that heat to ensure that our core body temperature does not increase above 37°C.

When the air temperature is 30°C, the temperature gradient between your core and your skin is smaller, so convection and radiation aren’t enough to dissipate heat as fast as it is generated.

Your skin has specialised receptors which can detect changes in skin temperature.

When the air temperature reaches 30°C these thermoreceptors in the skin send signals to the brain and give you a feeling of being hot. To compensate, you need to sweat (which removes heat through evaporation), fan yourself (forced convection), or have a cold drink. ‘Feeling hot’ is your body’s warning signal to tell you to do one of these things. This warning system is controlled by the hypothalamus in the brain, which measures the temperature of the blood in your core. If you are outdoors, then the air temperature is not the major factor influencing your heat gain – it is solar radiation. – Associate Professor Lois Harden, School of Physiology, answers questions 3 to 6.

4. WHERE DOES THE HEAT IN HOT DRINKS GO?

The heat from a hot drink will go directly to your core, the central part of your body.

tears down your cheeks. That is your body reacting to capsaicin, the active ingredient in chilli peppers, that triggers receptors in the epidermal tissue that normally respond to heat, tricking the nervous system into thinking you're overheating. In response you will experience both the sensations and the physical reactions of heat, including vasodilation, sweating, and reddening or flushing of the face or neck.

7. IS TELEPORTATION POSSIBLE?

Keen to skip Joburg road-rage and traffic congestion and simply teleport to your next destination? Teleportation is possible! In fact, it’s already being done! But there are some nuances

Teleportation makes use of a phenomenon called quantum entanglement, where you have a pair of particles – photons, electrons, or atoms – that are sitting at the two separate ends of your teleportation ‘journey’. Let’s say one is in Pretoria and the other is in Johannesburg. The particles are always interconnected in some sense, much like a pair of coins that land on the same side whenever they are flipped and observed. Einstein called this ‘spooky action at a distance’.

Surprisingly, if we mix one of the entangled particles, say the one in Pretoria, with another that is imprinted with a message (auxiliary particle), we can transfer the information to the other entangled twin, located in Johannesburg. But the restriction is that the particle that had the original message (auxiliary particle) must be destroyed in the process such as to violate the no-cloning theorem in quantum mechanics.

Put simply, information is transferred between two locations by destroying the original messaging while it reappears (transferred in a quantum way) elsewhere. And this is driven by spooky action at a distance (entanglement). So, to teleport, you must do so within the rules of quantum mechanics, otherwise it doesn’t work!

– Dr Isaac Nape, School of Physics

‘Beam me up, Scotty’?

It was Star Trek that let us imagine that we could simply step into a machine, say “Beam me up, Scotty!” and we’d instantaneously be in another location. However, teleporting is exchanging information between different media. So, is it possible?

5. WHY DOES DRINKING HOT DRINKS COOL YOU DOWN?

We all know someone who swears by drinking a hot beverage on a hot day, claiming it will cool them down – and the science agrees. Drinking a hot drink when it’s warm outside can cool you down, as long as you are not already sweating. That's because drinking hot beverages triggers your body's sweat response, without raising your core temperature too much. The sweat then cools on the surface of your skin which in turn reduces the feeling that you're too warm.

If you drink a hot drink, it does result in a lower amount of heat stored inside your body, provided that the additional sweat that’s produced when you drink the hot drink can evaporate. However, on a very hot and humid day, if you’re wearing a lot of clothing, or if you’re perspiring so much that it starts to drip on the ground and doesn’t evaporate from the skin’s surface, then drinking a hot drink is not helpful. Drinking a hot drink also causes peripheral vasodilation (widening of the blood vessels), which leads to an increase in blood flow to the skin. So as long as you are in a cool environment, you will increase dry heat loss too, but only for a short time.

6. WHAT CAUSES OUR PHYSICAL RESPONSES TO EATING HOT CURRY?

Most of us know the excruciating pain and bodily reaction to eating a super-hot curry – the runny nose, fiery tongue, and

Realistically, we would have to ‘interact’ you with a superposition of ‘building blocks’ entangled over a distance. Provided nothing disturbed any of these fragile channels, you would be ‘re-assembled’ from new building blocks. If anything disturbed any entanglement, some of you simply wouldn’t make it through and, thanks to the no-cloning rule, the ‘you’ that was there before would be a jumbled-up mess, so you couldn’t go back. On the up-side, if it was successful, there would be no moral quandary. –

Dr Bereneice Sephton, Wits Structured Light Lab

8. WHAT IS E=mc2 AND WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

E=mc2 is the mathematical equation that describe Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity. It is probably one of the most famous equations in the world. However, while most people know the equation itself, very few people actually know what it means. In the equation, “E” stands for energy, “m” stands for mass and “c” stands for the speed of light. So, the equation reads that energy is equal to mass times the square of the speed of light. In simple terms the equation means that energy can be transformed into mass and mass can be transformed into energy. This means that even the tiniest objects hold a massive amount of energy. For instance, if you can turn the mass of all the atoms in a paperclip into pure energy, that paperclip would yield 18 kilotons of TNT – about the same amount of energy in the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in WW11 – Professor Bruce Mellado, School of Physics. C

BRIDGING THE ENERGY GAP WITH AI

Machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) can help catapult South Africa’s energy distribution into the future.

Across the globe a new generation of energy production plants is coming online that is smarter and more efficient, thanks to Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technology.

With smart devices, sensors, and 4IR tech, these new power utilities are enabling consumers and producers to interact in real time resulting in better resource management.

Bundled in this technology is AI, the Internet of Things (IoT), real time big data, robotics and machine learning, which enables the energy sector to do stuff it was unable to do just a few short years ago.

ROBOTS, MICROCHIPS, PREDICTIONS

In China, robots now monitor coal power stations, going into places considered too dangerous for humans. 4IR technology has enabled countries like Germany, China, Australia, the Netherlands, and Japan to introduce systems that allow computer chips installed in households to control their energy grids and distribution via the internet. This tech is also helping humans peer into the future and make better decisions.

“Certain types of artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms can be used to predict the usage and generation of power. You can predict what is going to happen in one, two or

three-hours’ time,” says Professor Bruce Mellado, a physicist in the Wits School of Physics and iThemba LABS. “The use of AI could even help in optimising the efficiency of loadshedding.”

Machine learning is being used to better forecast solar radiation and allow solar plants to optimise productivity. While this new technology is available, its use and promotion are not uniform across the world. This was shown in a recent study by Wits PhD candidate, Nadya Bhagwan, and Dr Mary Evans, both from the School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies at Wits.

4IR TECH APPLICATION IN SA, GERMANY, CHINA

The two researchers assessed the use of 4IR technology amongst 26 energy companies in South Africa, Germany, and China. Nine of these companies were Chinese, with five based in South Africa and four in China. Eight of the other firms were German and nine South African.

The study, published in the May 2022 issue of the Journal of Energy in Southern Africa, investigated what renewable energy companies understood by 4IR and their use of these technologies.

All the companies told the researchers that 4IR was important and they ranked real time big data as the most important to the global energy grid. Most of the companies were using 4IR

SHAUN SMILLIE

technologies to collect and access plant data remotely using drones or the IoT. This was then analysed using various data management systems.

This fed into the development of drones, fast and more reliable mobile networks, and the creation of huge data storage facilities in the cloud.

The 4IR technologies recognised by South African firms all related to the collection, access, and analysis of real time big data. The least important 4IR technologies, according to the companies surveyed, were robotics and machine human integration.

Most of the technologies used originated from the US, Europe and China, and the research also showed that South Africa was lagging in the use and adoption of these new technologies, just as China surges ahead.

“So what emerged – and I found this not only through the survey but in subsequent interviews with companies in China, Germany, and South Africa – is that there is a push and strategic thrust in China to promote the use of 4IR technology and to develop these technologies themselves within a time frame,” explains Bhagwan, lead author of the research paper.

SA INSIGHTS FROM 4IR IN CHINA

Bhagwan believes that if South Africa looked at how China was

using 4IR, it would provide a smarter electrical grid that was more efficient.

She added that in the next five to 10 years, China will be way ahead of other countries, while South Africa has been pulled back by political uncertainty arising from the stranglehold of the statecontrolled energy sector.

“This technology is not cheap and it is not easily accessible and if you are going to take the risk, there must be some guaranteed benefit for you and your company for that investment,” says Evans.

With South Africa’s energy crisis, independent power producers believe that there is no political will to support them.

“Energy companies are saying, ‘we can do it – assist us by providing us with incentives and we can produce this energy, and we can invest in these technologies’. But there’s no way they’re going to do that without better, clearer direction in terms of how we are going to benefit and what the role of the state will be,” adds Bhagwan.

Most of these local independent energy producers are providing electricity to smaller communities and not into the grid. With some investment, and the use of 4IR technology, Evans believes that South Africa could follow the path led by Germany and China and see positive changes to South Africa’s energy sector. C

BUILDING SUSTAINABLE CITIES

Long-term economic and social side-effects

cities’ energy solutions.

It is estimated that 55% of the world’s population resides in cities and that cities are directly responsible for around twothirds of global energy consumption.

The influx of people to cities has increased since industrialisation as people seek better economic opportunities and a better quality of life.

ECONOMIC HEART OF DARKNESS

Johannesburg, the economic heart of South Africa, has a population of approximately five million people and the number of residents increases by around five people every day, according to the City’s Integrated Development Plan Review (2018/2019).

As the main contributor to the country’s GDP and a lever of socioeconomic development, energy security is critical for this economic hub. However, the ongoing and escalating electricity cuts have proved disruptive to productivity, and there have been heightened demands for the City to provide solutions to the energy crisis.

At a city level, there seems to be a vacuum in providing leadership or driving access and supply to alternative energy that could relieve Johannesburg of its dependence on the failing national power supplier.

To ensure operational stability, Big Business has responded by either installing diesel powered generators or harnessing solar energy for a continued supply of electricity during power cuts. Data released by the Gauteng City Region Observatory (GCRO) at Wits University also show an upward trend in households using alternative sources of energy.

“The more affluent sectors of society are able to protect themselves against water and electricity interruptions,” says Christina Culwick Fatti, Senior Researcher at the GCRO and a PhD candidate.

However, this development does not bode well for low-income households, as every cent of reduced revenue deprives the municipality of money to provide services.

According to Culwick Fatti, the existing financial model for municipalities is set up so that high-end users who pay on time regularly cross-subsidise the poor.

“If the higher [income] users are generating their own electricity, then money is not going back to the municipality,” she says.

OFF-GRID CITIES

The social and climate change implications of the rich seceding from state-provided infrastructure networks is the focus of a research project called Off-Grid Cities, co-funded by the National Research Foundation (NRF) and the GCRO.

The core objective of the project is to explore how elite infrastructure transitions need to be integrated into debates and practices towards producing environmentally sustainable and socially just cities.

For Culwick Fatti, the grid is a useful way to manage the distribution of electricity. Furthermore, the City and municipalities should play a leading role in managing the energy crisis to avoid a fragmented society – those accessing the national grid, and those seeking to reduce their reliance on it – especially considering the role of cities in driving economic development.

While households are slowly driving the uptake of alternative systems, the mass movement to sustainable and environmentally friendly energy hinges on government creating an enabling environment.

DRIVING A JUST TRANSITION

There is no doubt that cities need to be less dependent on fossil fuels, such as coal, for their energy needs. However, discussions envisioning energy efficient cities must go beyond promoting large-scale and decentralised renewable energy generation, says Professor Daniel Irurah in the School of Architecture and Planning, Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment.

“We need to re-imagine what Johannesburg, or any other city in South Africa, should look like in 10, 20 or 30 years to 2050,” he says.

This includes a blend of transport modes powered by biofuels, green hydrogen, and electric vehicles to add to existing interventions such as the Gautrain and the Rea Vaya Bus Rapid Transport (BRT) system, which aim to ease commuter congestion in the City.

need to be considered when thinking about our

BUHLE ZUMA SHIVAN PARUSNATH

Transport accounts for significant levels of direct energy consumption in the City. The process of producing fuel and operating vehicles results in carbon emissions, so energy efficient cities need to place this at the centre of discussions on the just energy transition.

“Green buildings that require less heating in winter and less cooling in summer will need to be common practice rather than a ‘nice to have’, as per prevailing practice,” says Irurah.

The added spin-off will be reduced noise and air pollution resulting in improved public health.

Irurah says cities need to push the debate from mitigation to climate change adaptation and think about how to cope with climate change threats such as water scarcity, heat waves, and food supply disruptions which will severely impair infrastructure performance and human productivity.

The long-term transition to climate-resilient and lower-carbon economy cities and societies is already underway and the core issue we must address is whether the transition will be inclusive or exclusionary. Inclusionary transitioning means long term sustainability while the exclusionary trend that we’re currently on does not. C

ELECTRICAL ENERGY FOR CLEANER CITIES

Wits University is inextricably bound to the City of Johannesburg in which it was established a century ago. As a key stakeholder in the City, the University has a responsibility to contribute positively to the City-Region in which it operates. Wits researchers are exploring how buses – a key transport mode for thousands of Johannesburg commuters – can be made more efficient and less pollutant.

While loadshedding is wreaking havoc, it’s not the only energy-related crisis at play. Scenes of broken-down buses on the side of the road, notably at peak hours, frequently play out in parts of South Africa. Breakdowns, due to problems with internal combustion engines, render transport services unreliable. From an economic perspective, such delays can drive productivity lower and add to input costs.

“The key factor is that the engine has too many parts and several things can go wrong. The fewer the components, the better, and the electric bus has a lot fewer of them,” explains Dr Lesedi Masisi, Senior Lecturer in the School of Electrical and Information Engineering, whose research interests include electrical energy conversion, renewable energy, and the electrification of transportation.

In 2019, Lesedi began researching how to electrify the University’s diesel buses. “The three factors motivating our research are reliability, scale – as buses are bulk transport –and, thirdly, pollution. Combustion engines release significant amounts of greenhouse gases, whereas electrified buses are a step in the right direction towards cleaner cities,” he says.

However, there remains much to be done before Wits moves to entirely electric buses. “Our study has identified ‘range anxiety’, in other words, how far can the bus drive before requiring a recharge?” Masisi says, noting that the engine of diesel buses at best only makes use of 25 to 27% of the energy towards the wheels, with the rest guzzled by the heat under the process of conversion. Conversely, emission-free electric buses use above 85% of the electrical energy from the battery.

For a complete picture though, one must compare the well-to-wheel efficiency analysis of both the traditional bus and the electric bus. “Even if you have found solutions to other problems – from range anxiety to skills set shortage –electricity supply reliability is still a big concern in the country,” says Masisi.

Over time, wealthier households have accessed alternative electricity more than poorer households.

Gauteng City-Region Observatory vignette #43

WOODLANDS AND FORESTS CONTREE-VERSIAL

A tree is not just a tree. It is also fuel, paper, furniture, livelihood, and industry. It is a living organism rooted in an ecosystem of fauna, flora, environment, climate, and humanity. Deryn Graham asked an environmental ecologist, an environmental lawyer, a social ecologist, and an accountant what happens when conflicting priorities collide and potentially compromise trees, woodland, and forests.

“The use of fuelwood as a main source of energy in rural communities is relieving Eskom of an enormous additional amount of pressure on the national grid.”

This is according to Wayne Twine, Associate Professor in the Wits School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences and Director of the Wits Rural Knowledge Hub at Wits Rural Campus in Mpumalanga.

Fuelwood is wood that is harvested from forestlands and combusted directly for useable heat.

Even as the country endures the single longest period of consecutive days of loadshedding, and as people look for alternative power sources for their homes, many would consider the use of fuelwood as a highly undesirable practice. This is based on concerns around environmental sustainability and human health, especially that of women who bear the brunt of the cooking responsibilities.

However, using a very conservative estimate based on the use of fuelwood for the cooking of only one meal per day, and excluding boiling water, for example, for bathing, Twine contests that the use of fuelwood is sparing the national grid approximately 543 MW at peak use and 210 GWh per year. This equates to a saving of approximately R200 million per year in energy generating costs for Eskom.

Despite the successful roll out of electrification in many rural communities across the country, the cost for indigent households of switching on appliances, especially energy-intensive stoves, is prohibitive, and so the use of fuelwood persists.

At best, the harvesting of wood from communal land is managed by local chiefs, and is restricted to dead wood [dry, brittle, dead tree branches] only, but in many areas, the deadwood is depleted, and people resort to foraging from live wood sources.

“If the alternative is drawing more energy from Eskom’s coal powered units, we are in any case using up valuable natural resources. Damned if we use

fuelwood and damned if we revert to mains electricity, which similarly depends on the burning of fossil fuels,” says Twine.

While burning fuelwood is not desirable, Twine believes that it will remain an important part of the energy mix in South Africa for probably the next 20 years.

“The challenges and solutions are complex,” he says. “In acknowledging the reality of the costs and availability of electricity for poor rural communities, we must work towards ensuring that programmes aimed at empowering communities to use the resources which natural ecosystems provide to these households more sustainably, are supported and expanded.”

FUELWOOD SUBSIDISES ESKOM

NOT SEEING THE WOOD(LAND) FOR THE TREES

In 2019, a German/Dutch-funded study led by Jean-Francois Bastin and Thomas Crowther of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich, claimed that there were huge benefits in tree planting projects across the globe, including on large tracts of land in Africa.

However, many large tracts of land in Africa are not historically woodland in the first place. A woodland is an area covered in trees. Woodland is distinct from a forest, which has a largely closed canopy forged from the branches and foliage of trees interlocking overhead.

Tree planting programmes were recommended following the Bastin/Crowther study and several African countries, desperate for funding, listened – even going as far as to introduce alien species. For example, in Madagascar, restoration often involves planting eucalyptus trees, which are non-indigenous. In 2019, Ethiopia embarked on a project to plant 20 billion trees by the end of 2022, with potentially disastrous effects on water supplies and land availability for agriculture.

While erroneous on many levels, this study at least served to mobilise African scientists into very vocal opposition, and to work together to formulate a regional plan for Africa’s own response to climate change. This response included a Wits University-led Future Ecosystems for Africa study, launched in 2022. Funded by the Oppenheimer Generations Research and Conservation, the study seeks regional solutions for regional challenges.

“The methods and results of the [Bastin/Crowther] study were both incorrect and misleading and therefore potentially dangerous for the continent. Africa has many different ecosystems and to suggest that tree planting is the panacea for global warming is irresponsible. The science is wrong and even if we covered the entire continent in trees, the amount of carbon cited in the Bastin study will never be captured,” says Professor Sally Archibald, an ecologist in the Wits School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences (APES). “As African scientists, we must mobilise to make our voices heard in situations where global policies/science undermine what our own research is showing us.”

Such mobilisation and rebutting scientific inaccuracy is already evident from Nicola Stevens, a Wits alumna and affiliate based at the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute, who is part of a team working on novel, constructive ideas to manage African ecosystems, in particular the African savanna.

Together with Ghanaian Mohammed Armani, Stevens mobilised a community of African ecologists to provide an evidence base for identifying climate mitigation actions that are appropriate for African ecosystems.

This is the first time that such an evidence base has been produced, and it has already provided inputs to the African Group of Negotiators at the climate COP27 meeting held in November 2022. Suggestions include recognising that not disturbing Africa’s carbon rich soil is an imperative.

“It is important to plough and cultivate in areas that can support agricultural activity and to preserve grasslands whose soil carbon has a vital role to play in the fight against global warming,” says Archibald.

The need to manage grazing systems and balance stock levels as part of soil management measures was part of the findings. Included in the recommendations were ensuring that mangroves and tropical forests – which capture significant levels of carbon –are not destroyed, as well as ensuring proper fire management programmes in forested areas.

The REDD+ Programme benefits landowners in Africa when they do not cut down trees. REDD+ stands for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation, while the plus signifies the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests, and enhancement of forest carbon stocks.

However, there is no REDD+ programme equivalent to compensate for preserving grassland, which traps carbon in its soil. Biodiversity offset legislation needs to be drafted to protect all our important ecosystems.

Properly managed, our African forests, savanna and other environments can greatly assist in mitigating the problem of carbon emissions – to which Africa, as a continent, has contributed the least. Most importantly, this can be achieved without disrupting the natural balance of our rich biodiversity systems.

MORE ON THIS RESEARCH:

i- Future ecosystems for Africa programme launched at Wits

- Restoring forest landscapes in Madagascar

- No to the ‘Eucalyptus war’ in Madagascar!

SAVE THE TREES, HARNESS HYDRO, AND FEED THE NATION

In 2010, the World Economic Forum defined energy poverty as the lack of access to sustainable modern energy services and products. Energy poverty results from a lack of adequate, affordable, reliable, quality, safe and environmentally sound energy services to support development. There are various solutions aimed at addressing energy poverty in Africa, but not all solutions are sustainable for individual countries, the continent, or the planet.

Tracy-Lynn Field, Professor of Law at Wits, holds the Claude Leon Foundation Chair in Earth Justice and Stewardship. She says, “Solving the energy needs of a country and ensuring environmental protection should not be a mutually exclusive exercise. It requires critical thinking to find answers to both issues.” Clearly, it’s a delicate calibration to combat energy poverty whilst preserving natural resources.

Field, whose research areas include environmental law, human rights, mining law, climate change law and water law, recently collaborated with Dr Jonathan Muledi, Associate Professor at the University of Lubumbashi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), to study public and private liability for deforestation, forest degradation, and biodiversity loss in the DRC.

The DRC hosts Africa’s largest expanse of tropical rainforest (and the world’s second largest after Brazil), making it a critical part of the climate change equation. Although the rate of deforestation in the DRC has not been as rapid as in Brazil, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has reported that the pace of deforestation has increased significantly, largely due to extensive land clearance for agricultural development to meet the food demands of an ever-growing population.

Understanding the economic value of the forest resource

and its ecosystem and the amount of carbon storage it represents, as well as the drivers of deforestation, are important considerations in a liability discussion. Direct drivers include unregulated artisanal logging for wood fuel, charcoal production, building and construction; forest clearing for subsistence and commercial agriculture; commercial logging for export; and artisanal and commercial mining.

The DRC has also recently opened bids for oil and gas concessions in forested areas. Indirectly, poor governance and corruption also play a significant role in abetting the unsustainable use of the DRC’s forest resources.

“There are a number of international and national laws that could be used to protect the forests of the DRC in a manner that allows for the DRC populace and future generations to continue to benefit from the country’s forest resources. But these laws are likely to have little effect unless the elephant in the room – the DRC’s low rate of access to modern energy services – is addressed,” says Field.

The most obvious alternatives to wood fuel and charcoal production would be to harness the DRC’s massive hydropower potential, which would allow the country to meet domestic energy demand and have additional capacity to export to other African countries, including South Africa. But the Grand Inga scheme, which would potentially see the generation of 40 000 megawatts of power, has been beset by funding and contractual issues for many years.

“Wood fuel from the DRC’s primary forests is not a renewable resource. Water is. Addressing energy poverty in the DRC by developing sustainable hydropower and nonhydropower renewable energy is imperative if the global community is serious about protecting the forests of the DRC,” says Field.

COUNTING ON CLIMATE CHANGE REPORTING PROTOCOLS

When two professors of Accountancy in the University’s Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management embarked on a 1 100km paddle down one of the Amazon River’s largest tributaries, at least one of them knew what he was in for.

Fifty years ago, as a 22-year-old, Professor Kurt Sartorius undertook the same trip to Brazil, which left him almost broken. So why again now, and why did Professor Wayne Van Zijl think it might be a good idea to join Sartorius and his son, Benn?

“We wanted to raise awareness of the impact on climate change of the extensive deforestation of the Amazon rainforest,” says Sartorius. “But our objective was a little more focused than simply the message around the damage that is being done by both commercial enterprises and local subsistence farmers. Most of us with any level of awareness already know what is happening to vast tracts of immensely ecologically sensitive areas of our planet.”

The destruction of the Brazilian rain forest is two-fold: Firstly, from commercial enterprises, and secondly from the slash-andburn land clearance by locals to make room for subsistence cultivation. As the large multinationals clear more and more land, so the subsistence activities move further inland and the two leapfrog each other, encroaching ever further into the deep forest. The Amazon rain forest ecosystem is critical for the entire planet’s weather patterns and so its preservation and better management is vital.

In the context of their work as accountants, Sartorius and Van Zijl are trying to bring about change in the business and investment world, by introducing reporting protocols and

standards that take into consideration climate change mitigation and off-set measures that large corporations are beginning to integrate into their business practices. Are extractors of Brazilian wood and minerals re-investing in community development? Are they assisting with the transition to smarter farming methods and education that improves local knowledge and farming practices?

The bottom line is that for Sartorius and Van Zijl, the corporate reports of companies cannot be about the financial bottom line only and must take into consideration companies’ social and environmental assets, liabilities, generation, and consumption. Companies that are looking at more environmentally friendly ways of mining, and which are spending money on remediating and repairing damage caused by their extraction methods, will show less profit, but ultimately should be more attractive to investors.

“We cannot reward companies based solely on enormous profits.” says Van Zijl. “Sustainability reporting must be accelerated, and this is what we were trying to bring to the sector’s attention. As accountants, we also have a role to play in mitigating the impact of climate change by providing environmental information for investors and society to hold companies accountable for their commercial activities”.

Responsible investing requires setting reporting standards that can be used to assess the overall ‘value’ of a company, not just value to its shareholders, but its value to society and to the planet. C

To contribute, visit AccountantsCanSavePlanet (https:// devman.wits.ac.za/devman/accountantssaveplanet/giving/)

ENERGY IN THE BODY

How does the body convert food to fuel? How much do we need? And will running really help with weight loss? Delia du Toit finds out.

You have more of it on Saturdays than on Mondays, it seems to evaporate just before any planned gym session, and kids on aeroplanes have a seemingly endless supply of it. Energy sustains life and, despite what you may think when you’re drained at the end of a workday, our bodies are remarkable engines that continually produce, use, and manage this resource.

At its most basic level, the process is quite straight-forward. We eat, food is digested, and energy is produced. Professor Shane Norris, Director of the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI)-National Research Foundation (NRF) Centre of Excellence in Human Development and the Medical Research Council (MRC)/ Wits Developmental Pathways for Health Research Unit (DPHRU) explains: “Food has energy locked up in the three macronutrients: proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. [The vitamins and minerals in food are called micronutrients]. After food is digested and broken down to its more basic components, glucose is extracted from the macronutrients and used by the body as fuel.”

ENERGY INTAKE

But the body is a complicated machine and it’s not quite as straightforward as ‘food in, energy out’. Although it can extract and use glucose from all macronutrients, the body prefers to use carbohydrates for energy, says Dr Thanujj Kisten, Lecturer in nutrition, exercise and energetics in the School of Physiology.

“All the macronutrients can be a source of energy, and fat actually contains the most energy. But fats and proteins take much longer to break down, so the body prefers carbohydrates. The brain cannot directly use fat as an energy source, and protein is used as a last resort because it has more important jobs as a catalyst for chemical reactions. Unfortunately, the diet industry has created this misconception that all carbohydrates are bad. Simple carbs such as refined sugar are indeed processed very quickly, leading to a large spike in energy and then a crash. But complex carbs such as brown rice are broken down more slowly, resulting in a gradual and sustained release of energy.”

But even when carbs aren’t available, the body will continue

to function by converting fat and protein to use as energy. “This process takes longer, which is why people on keto diets [a popular low carb/high fat weight loss diet] will often feel lethargic,” says Kisten.

When you eat also plays a role in energy levels throughout the day, he adds. “Not eating breakfast, for example, could cause lethargy [fatigue] as your body has no immediately available fuel. Research shows that having five smaller meals per day, instead of three big meals, provides more sustained energy throughout the day.”

ENERGY EXPENDITURE

Even when you spend the entire day watching television from your couch, your body uses around 8 700 kilojoules per day to keep you alive. The brain uses the biggest chunk of this number compared to any other organ, says Norris. “Then, functional systems such as the cardiovascular and digestive systems take their cut, maintenance systems that repair or create cells further reduce available energy, and the immune system uses some energy to prevent disease – and much more when fighting an infection.

CHANTÉ SCHATZ

“Food has energy locked up in the three macronutrients: proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. After food is digested and broken down to its more basic components, glucose is extracted from the macronutrients and used by the body as fuel.”

Any unused energy is then stored as body fat to be used when extra fuel is needed.”

Activity, of course, alters energy expenditure. A five-kilometre run, for example, burns between 1 300 to 1 500 kilojoules in a person of average height and weight. So, if physical activity burns energy, why do experts recommend exercise to increase energy levels?

“In the short term, exercise uses energy, and you may feel fatigued afterwards,” says Kisten. “But in the long term, exercise teaches the body to use energy more efficiently. Over time, it starts using less energy to conduct normal daily activities, leaving you feeling more energetic. This effect can take anywhere from two weeks to two months to occur, depending on the type of exercise and the frequency.”

FINDING BALANCE

There is no one-size-fits-all energy template, says Kisten. “A professional athlete will have much higher energy needs than someone who works a desk job. The heavier you are, the more energy your body requires to move. This is one of the reasons why an obese person might fatigue faster than someone of a healthy weight. Conversely, someone who is underweight will not have enough fuel and will also suffer from fatigue.”

Your energy needs will depend on your health and wellness goal, and there are many nuances and considerations. According to a Wits Sport and Health (WiSH) webinar, energy availability in athletes can be affected by a number of health factors – some normal, such as female hormones regulating the menstrual cycle, others problematic, such as iron deficiency or psychological challenges. “And newer research shows that even weight loss is not as straightforward as once believed”, says Norris.

“Any diet that creates a kilojoule deficit in weight loss, though some are healthier term. But we are now realising that a kilojoule biological stress response. The body recognises right when weight loss occurs, and it activates slow metabolism, while brain centres associated fire up to increase appetite. Eventually, your body tries to fight you along the way.”

“On a global scale, obesity is now a bigger hunger – and it will be for a long time,” study of three generations, the increased disease persisted in the grandchildren of “Whether you’re vegan, vegetarian, a simple carbs, supply is no longer the world’s biggest problem. Now, it’s about socioeconomics: Can you afford healthy food and are you getting the nutrients you need? Our work in Soweto shows that around 20 to 36% of adults are anaemic, meaning they don’t have enough iron to produce blood cells. Today, the challenge is not having more, but finding balance.” C

“A five-kilometre run, for example, burns between 1 300 to 1 500 kilojoules in a person of average height and weight.”

HOW ACCURATE IS THE PALEO DIET?

The premise of one of today’s most popular diets, the paleo diet, is that modern eating habits are so far removed from those of our ancestors that our bodies couldn’t keep up, resulting in health ailments and weight problems. It cuts out anything ‘processed’ – even some crops produced by modern agriculture such as cereal grains and legumes.

How accurate is this? In a nutshell, it’s not, says Dr Christine Steininger, Project Director of Genus: DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Palaeosciences. “Even our ancestors ate processed food. Later, Homo sapiens used fire, a processing method, to make food more palatable and to kill microbes. And as our diets evolved, our gut evolved.

Our ancestors in South Africa, the most common of which was Australopithecus africanus, between 4-1.9 million years ago, ate more like chimps, she says. “They ate what was in their immediate environment, such as fruits, nuts, and insects. Early Homo habilis, between 2.4-1.6 million years ago, started using tools to eat mammal remains such as bone marrow, likely scavenging it, and the extra protein increased their brain size. Then Homo erectus, our earliest known upright ancestors, were possibly migrating hunters and the additional protein made them taller and stronger. Diet played an important role in evolution.”

JOURNEY OF A SUGAR THROUGH THE BODY

Whether fat, protein, or carbohydrate, the body breaks food down to the same energy component: glucose – the main sugar found in the blood. But glucose is actually quite toxic, says Norris, so the body must constantly balance glucose demands, use, and excess. To do this, the pancreas adjusts levels of the hormone insulin, which ‘pushes’ glucose out of circulation and into muscles and fat cells.

KILLING CANCER WITH CRYOABLATION

When 75-year-old Kennethy ‘Kenny’ Siphayi went for a check-up after surgery to treat an enlarged prostate, he didn’t expect to have a renal cell carcinoma uncovered in his left kidney. Carcinoma is a cancer arising in the tissue of the skin or any of the internal organs.

Kenny’s urologist referred him to Dr Charles Sanyika, Head of Interventional Radiology at the Wits Donald Gordon Medical Centre (WDGMC). Interventional radiologists diagnose and treat a range of conditions by inserting instruments – catheters, wires, needles, probes – from outside the body using imaging technology such as X-rays, CT scans and ultrasounds.

Sanyika was preparing to pilot a pioneering technology called cryoablation – a first in southern Africa for the treatment of renal cell carcinoma.

“Cryoablation is a treatment that had not been available in the country previously for patients with early renal cell carcinoma, the most common type of kidney cancer,” explains Sanyika. “It’s a minimally invasive intervention where we insert a needle [probe] into the cancer mass and create very low temperatures, between minus 20 and minus 40 degrees Celsius, which result in cell death.”

COLD-SHOULDERING CANCER

Ablation is the removal or destruction of a body part or tissue by freezing or by radiofrequency, heat, hormones, drugs, or surgery.

In Kenny’s case of cryoablation – from the Greek ‘cryo’ meaning cold – extremely cold temperatures are achieved by use of flow dynamics of the argon gas (a non-corrosive gas) to freeze and kill malignant cells in his kidney.

Kenny recalls his urologist’s explanation of the procedure, about which Kenny was understandably originally quite anxious: “I must be honest with you, I was very, very worried, because from the experience of the first operation [prostrate] they put in a needle…it was a little bit sore, so when he told me of this kidney operation, I was a little bit worried,” said the Soweto resident and father of four.

Despite Kenny’s initial reservations, it transpired that he was an ideal candidate. “Tumour ablation, more specifically percutaneous cryoablation, has emerged as an alternative to surgery in the

DEBORAH MINORS

Advances in non-invasive interventional oncology mean that early cancer, which can progress to advanced life-threatening cancer, can now be frozen, burnt, microwaved, or otherwise obliterated.

Ice formation on two IceForce needles inserted into the tumour mass.

“Cryoablation is a treatment that had not been available in the country previously for patients with early renal cell carcinoma, the most common type of kidney cancer.”

treatment of renal cell carcinoma and particularly for early-stage renal cell cancer tumours, that is, localised and smaller than 4cm,” says Eleanor Joubert, a Senior Field Clinical Specialist at Boston Scientific, a biotech firm that manufactures medical devices used in interventional medical specialties, including in Kenny’s procedure.

Sanyika elaborates: “Cryoablation enables treating early kidney cancer without the patient going under the knife. We used the ICEfx Cryoablation System, a gas cylinder, and a needle – this does the freezing. With surgery, there is removal of part of or the whole kidney, but cryoablation is minimally invasive and zaps just the tumour and a bit of the kidney around it.”

FREEZE, FRY, MICROWAVE

Although Kenny’s was among the first cases of cryoablation locally to treat renal cell carcinoma, the procedure is being used internationally to successfully treat several benign or malignant tumours in the lung, prostate, breast, and the musculoskeletal system, as well as in the management of pain. The safety, efficacy and the ability to visualise the ice formation on radiographic imaging enables the use of cryoablation in many different treatment sites within the body.

Dr John Cantrell, an interventional radiologist at the WDGMC who participated in Kenny’s procedure, explains that cryoablation is just one way to eliminate a tumour.

“There are various ways to kill the tumour without cutting it out – you can inject chemotherapy into it, you can inject alcohol into it, you can inject radioactive beads into it.”

The nature of the tumour dictates how oncologists will attack

it and radiation oncologists can shape the radiation field to correspond to the shape of the tumour. Cantrell says that to freeze or heat a tumour, doctors need some overlap between the edge of the tumour and the healthy tissue surrounding it.

“The advantage of cryoablation is that it preserves the collagen architecture of the adjacent organs, so you can still get your margin and kill the tumour cells, but you’re not going to make a big hole in the chest wall, for example, as you would for the heating.”

Today Kenny is alive and thriving. He reports that, aside from a bit of post-operative blood where the probes were inserted, his recovery had been comfortable, the procedure mostly painless, and he was discharged the same day.

“In the past, when you have cancer, it was one way: You would think that no, I’m going to die. But today it’s different. The country has improved a lot, doctors have improved a lot – that [they] can kill that tumour that’s now cancerous in your body and you still manage to live! I’d advise whoever has a problem of this kind should not be unhappy. They mustn’t worry that much because there’s a solution for it.” C

“The advantage of cryoablation is that it preserves the collagen architecture of the adjacent organs.”

Dr Charles Sanyika and Professor Ole Graumann, RCC Cryoablation Proctor (a form of peer review) from Denmark discuss the location and needle placement during the procedure.

Dr Charles Sanyika shows the two IceForce needles used to successfully treat the first RCC cryoablation at Wits Donald Gordon Medical Centre.

THE ENERGY IT TAKES TO NAVIGATE AN ‘ABLE-BODIED’ WORLD

MARCIA ZALI

In its preamble, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities recognises the need to promote and protect the human rights of all people with disabilities, and for the international community to cooperate to improve the lives of persons with disabilities globally, particularly in developing countries. In South Africa, universal design and access will improve the lives of the 20% of the population living with disabilities.

Since 1986, the Wits Disability Rights Unit (DRU) has been working to overcome the educational and accessibility barriers facing students with visual, hearing, physical, learning, and psychological disabilities, and chronic illnesses.

“Universal access means providing access to services for all

people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialised design. Universal design is the design of buildings, products, or environments to make them accessible to most people, regardless of age, disability, background, or any other factors,” says Head of the DRU, Dr Anlia Pretorius.

EVERYDAY LIFE DEMANDS MUCH ENERGY

With the world generally designed to meet the needs of ‘ablebodied’ people, everyday activities such as communicating, accessing buildings and public transport, reading and writing, require a lot more energy and effort by people with disabilities than ‘able-bodied’ people. However, Subhashini Ellan, the Academic and Facilities Access Coordinator at DRU, says the

The implementation of universal design and access could improve the lives of people with disabilities.

amount of energy required by people with disabilities to execute tasks is not easy to quantify.

“The energy expended by people with disabilities is difficult to quantify because of the variances in the types of disabilities and impairments, a person's body strength and abilities, as well as the accessibility of the spaces and built environment encountered,” explains Ellan.

“Wheelchair users may need to take longer routes to access buildings, often with no clear directions or accessible lifts or ramp access. This may cause additional fatigue leading to reduced functioning after exertion. Blind people require reading material to be converted to an accessible format, software screen readers or braille print and this may take more time and energy to read due to the various complexities of the formats,” adds Andrew Sam, the Adaptive Technologist at the DRU.

Audiologist and Senior Lecturer in the Wits Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology, Dr Victor de Andrade says that basic communication requires a lot of energy for people with communication impairments such as hearing loss, deafness, and hearing impairment.

In an ongoing study into how Deaf people access healthcare at hospitals, de Andrade says that the research reveals that a lot of energy in the form of planning and preparation is required for Deaf people to access healthcare.

“Going to a doctor’s appointment requires a lot of energy in terms of getting somebody to go with them to serve as an interpreter or as an extra set of ears, because they may not be able to hear everything that the doctor communicates to them,” he says.

The effort and difficulty to communicate also affects the families of people with hearing loss, deafness, and hearing impairment. Family members, too, have to use a lot of their time and energy to make the lives of their loved ones less strenuous as they try to manoeuvre in an ‘able-bodied’ world.

ENABLING RESOURCES EXIST

The good news is that the technology and research in to finding ways to improve the quality of life for people with disabilities has become more advanced, reducing the amount of energy and effort it takes to function.

Assistive devices such as hearing aids, cochlear implants, FM systems (special wireless systems that help people hear better in a noisy environment), and DM systems, which use digital signals to transmit sound from a microphone (speaker) to the receiver (individual with hearing loss), are some of the tools that can be used to improve communication and hearing for people with hearing impairment or loss.

“If somebody has had a stroke, there may be opportunities for speech-language therapy, as well as redirected communicative energy in the form of alternative and augmentative communication technology. If somebody cannot talk, there are alternative ways of communicating, but even that requires energy,” says de Andrade.

Resources at the DRU include accessible study material for students with visual and print impairment (the difficulty or inability to read printed material due to a perceptual, physical or visual disability), human support through sign language interpreting, real-time captioning for Deaf and hearing-impaired students, as well as the provision of computer centres equipped with state-ofthe-art assistive technologies.

“DRU staff are specialists in their field and provide advanced technological and psychosocial support and training to students. We have pushed for the use of accessible learning environments such as ulwazi [the Wits Learning Management System] to ensure that students with various disabilities are supported, Universal Design for Learning resources for academics, ramps, handrails and tactile paving, disabled access online maps and signage, and disability-accessible parking spaces,” says Pretorius.

In addition, the Wits transport service has made available two buses that can accommodate wheelchair users. Students with disabilities are also accommodated as close as possible to where their lectures take place. Those who need extra time and other concessions are assisted with screening assessments and motivations to their faculties to grant the necessary concessions. C

“Universal access means providing access to services for all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialised design.”

Andrew Sam, Dr Anlia Pretorius, and Subhashini Ellan from the Wits Disability Rights Unit.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ENERGY

The existing (or rather, non-existing) electricity in South Africa affects us

LEM CHETTY

On a Monday work morning in South Africa, the conversations over coffee are not just about the countrywide energy crisis, but the physical and mental crises we are all experiencing as a result. Taxpayers are suffering a form of ‘loadshedding fatigue’, which manifests in disrupted sleep patterns – a case in point: ‘how to turn off a beeping alarm alert’ is a top FAQ on a major security company’s website, while managing ‘heat waves and mosquitoes while powerless’ dominates Google questions. Along with working around inverter capacity, traffic chaos, and the pressure of planning meals and cooking, we need an energy shift to deal with the dearth of electrical energy.

THE SCIENCE BEHIND ALTERNATIVE ENERGY (NOT THE GREEN KIND)

South Africans (and other nations experiencing similar challenges) are in desperate need of life hacks to manage our personal energy. Tapping in to our own reserves may be a solution. Dr Sahba Besharati, a neuropsychologist in the School of Human and Community Development at Wits says, “We know there are electrical frequencies in the brain. These can be picked up by an electroencephalogram [EEG] and they do change in wavelength at times. For example, these frequencies in the brain are different during sleep and during mindfulness practices.” A different energy emanates from the brain as a result of

psychologically and physically. Wits researchers shed light on alternative energies and how to leverage them when we’re depleted and in the dark.

chemical reactions. Think of the times you’ve felt love or happiness in the company of another person. That warm, fuzzy feeling is a chemical reaction, or a type of energy exchange, between people and some animals.

“There is a neurobiological aspect, which has to do with the increase in the hormone oxytocin, not just in romantic situations but between parents and babies, while breastfeeding, or during pregnancy, and sometimes with friends, when we feel effective touch or stroking, and interacting with our pets,” she says.

Biologically, the ‘energy’ – or chemical – comes from the pituitary gland in the brain. Scientifically, this helps facilitate attachments to other people (and pets), Besharati explains. Interestingly, oxytocin is available in some countries as a nasal spray! “Neuroscientists are testing to see if it can be used to help with postpartum depression, for instance,” she says.

PUT A POSITIVE CHARGE ON YOUR ENERGY

Dr Lucy Draper-Clarke, who holds a PhD in Mindfulness and Education, says her research at Wits focuses on how to help people “develop daily, life-enhancing, contemplative practices” and focus their energy to helping others. This work bridges firstperson experience with neuroscience research and offers ancient practices to meet modern demands.

Perhaps the reaction to a dead smartphone battery in the morning is not to search frantically for a power source, but to use the time to fire up your own energy. “If you start your morning with a fragmented, distracted mind, going from a cell phone call to an email, to social media, you will experience mental exhaustion. Whereas if you meditate every morning, there’s a better chance of your focusing on one thing and getting through that task more effectively. Research also tells us that multitasking is a misnomer – you use twice as much energy shifting between the tasks than if you focused on one at a time,” says Draper-Clarke.

A researcher-practitioner and facilitator of mindfulness meditation, yoga, and expressive movement through dance, Draper-Clarke says, “Closer to home, African practices such as dance and drumming cultivate energy through movement, stamping and dancing. Traditional healers can dance all night without tiring. The music and the drumbeat coming into the body helps them harness energy.”

“Conversely, Buddhist traditions work more with silence, stillness, and solitude, and understand that ‘energy follows focus’. A meditation practice helps us to work with energy, to cultivate and direct it to help others. In Qigong, the meridian lines that connect all the organs in the body have links to disease, dis-ease or illness. Acupuncture moves energy along these meridian lines. So there are effective ways to shift energy, we just must find what works best for us.”

Complaining about things we can do nothing about exhausts us and has no positive impact on the situation. Draper-Clarke says, “Our feelings are transferred to others; we impact those around us.” For example, when an angry person walks into a room, she says our neuroception picks up danger. The angry person is potentially dangerous. It shows up as a quiver down your spine, an awareness.

But the same goes for compassion. People are easily able to identify compassionate people and when they do, they feel safer and more open. We know that when people are emotionally regulated, their brain works better. So, my suggestion is to refocus our energy towards cultivating awareness and kindness, versus fear, in difficult times.”

Science tells us that the possibility to shift our energy exists within us all. C

‘MUSICKING’ AND ENERGY

If you’ve ever stood too close to a speaker at a musical event, you can attest to ‘feeling’ the energy that sound waves generate.

Dr Susan Harrop-Allin, Senior Lecturer in Community Music at Wits, says, “Sound waves, like light, are a form of energy, so music can be considered as a form of energy that we experience in a sensory way.”

She subscribes to the theory of Christopher Small who coined the verb ‘musicking’, which emphasises music as human action. It encompasses all musical activity, from composing, to performing, to listening and singing in your mind. Through ‘musicking’ anyone can access the energy of music, through various forms of participation. Perceptions that you must be talented to produce music are incorrect. Neuropsychology and musical psychology tell us that your brain is hardwired to do ‘musicking’ of any kind.

“In experience one is energised by music, and collaborative music-making creates a special kind of energy between its participants. There is a useful term called ‘musical flow’ that describes what musicians feel when they’re in synchronisation with each other; when musical challenge and achievement are matched. There’s a timelessness about it, for example, when a choir or instrumental ensemble creates overtones – those sounds are produced through intense musical co-operation and listening to each other. We hear notes ‘above’ the melodies we’re singing, but which (magically) nobody is actually playing or singing.”

In South Africa music is a commonality, especially in our strong choral tradition in churches, singing and dancing for social occasions and rituals. “Musicking is integrated into our society, and not separate from it,” she says.

Draper-Clarke’s research concurs: “Music and community can support us and shift locked energy, even trauma. We do this through stamping, dancing, any rhythmic movement.”

To access musical energy, Harrop-Allin says it is often more satisfying to make music with a group, rather than individually, whether it’s through performing, creating, or listening.

“There is an immediate engagement with many parts of the brain; it just lights up. Listening is not passive, it’s participatory, with tapping with the beat and singing or hearing a song in your head. Music has the unique ability to be heard and replicated in your brain. Hence, all human beings have musical potential. And music isn’t only the purview of the ‘talented’ but embedded in our experiences of being human.”

While she admits that music often does require ‘energy’ to be created or heard, sometimes the opportunity to go backwards can help … perhaps in a battery-operated or wind-up wireless radio.

Our planet Earth is our perfect home, the only one we have. But it was not always hospitable. In the beginning, just after what is known as the ‘Big Bang’ about 4,6 billion years ago, our planet was a raging mass of hot chemicals. There were no atmosphere, no oceans, and no life. This blob of a protoplanet comprised various bits of accumulated leftovers from the birth of our sun.

PLANET PIZZA

Professor Gillian Drennan, Head of the School of Geosciences at Wits, explains what happened next:

“These leftover particles were pulled together and collided with one another under the influence of gravity. That was 4,6 billion years ago and if someone had caught a glimpse of this new protoplanet back then, it would have appeared as a big threedimensional pizza. Imagine a ball of pizza with pepperoni, onion and tomato equally distributed throughout. That is what the early Earth was like – a complete mishmash of ingredients.”

As collisions continued and the protoplanet (a large body of matter in orbit around the sun) grew, it heated up. It became so hot that it began partially to melt, explains Drennan.

“As it melted it began to differentiate or separate into different layers of increasing density towards the centre of the Earth. Melting allowed various volatiles in the accreted [accumulated] particles to escape, giving rise to the development of an atmosphere and even the oceans.” Volatiles are the group of chemical elements and chemical compounds that can be readily vaporised.

“It is also thought that the oceans might even have resulted from the accretion of some comets,” adds Drennan.

THE GOLDILOCKS ZONE

For Earth to sustain life, several things had to emerge from this hot globule to make it the only planet in our Universe where life exists (as far as we know at the moment).

Firstly, our planet’s position in our solar system had to be just right. Our planet would not be what it is today if it wasn’t for our sun, believed to be a third or fourth generation star.

The Earth is perfectly positioned from the sun to support life, in what is often referred to as the ‘Goldilocks zone’, a habitable band where water remains liquid.

“If we were any closer to the sun, we would all fry. And if we were any further away, we would all freeze,” says Professor Mary Scholes in the School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences.

CRUST-COOLING CONVECTION

Secondly, our planet is still in the process of cooling down from its original cataclysmic formation and the heat produced by radioactive elements in its interior. The most efficient way for this to happen is convection, says Professor Roger Gibson in the School of Geosciences.

This convection occurs in Earth’s mantle where the rocks are so hot that they are molten and able to flow and even melt. As the upwelling mantle nears Earth’s surface, it starts to flow laterally, splitting apart the thin, cold crust above it. Hot magma rises along these giant cracks and cools down, forming new crust. And if hot magma is rising to the surface somewhere, in other places, cold crust is sinking back down into the mantle.

This conveyor-belt of crust formation and destruction shifts the continental fragments across the planet on which we live, causing them not only to break apart or collide, but physically to move into different latitudes over timespans of tens of millions of years, thus driving significant climatic shifts.

MAGNETIC PROTECTIVE UMBRELLA

The next ingredient in the process to create a liveable environment was for the planet to form a protective umbrella to shield us from objects from space. This is the magnetic field that is believed to have developed around 3,5 billion years ago.

“Our magnetic field protects us from cosmic rays and from high energy particles associated with coronal mass ejections, those high energy particles that come out of the sun and get deflected around the Earth,” says Professor Susan Webb in the School of Geosciences, who studies Earth’s earliest magnetic field.

“Earth happens to have a large liquid core and the rotation rate

SHAUN SMILLIE AND SCHALK MOUTON

Our home planet Earth is unique, not only in its position in space but in the way it manages energy to create a comfortable spot for us to inhabit.

is such that, between the rotation of the planet and the chemical and thermal buoyancy, we get a dynamo action, which is basically turning mechanical energy into electromagnetic energy that generates a magnetic field,” explains Webb.

Other planets in our solar system lack a magnetic field. Venus, for instance, is rotating too slowly, while Mars is so small that scientists think its core has mostly frozen and doesn’t have enough liquid iron to generate a magnetic field.

Protection from our magnetic field is thought to have been important for evolution, as plants, animals and humans on Earth are protected from genetic damage from these high energy particles.

Magnetic minerals preserved in rocks provide evidence of the strength of the magnetic field in the past and how it, along with the positions of the continents, has changed over time. With rocks as old as 3,5 billion years and as the home to one of Earth’s earliest recognisable continents, South Africa is a rich laboratory in which to study these secular changes, says Gibson.

“Fluctuations in the magnetic field could in the future help explain how life emerged on Earth,” says Webb.

THE GREAT OXIDATION EVENT

Another important role of this magnetic field is that it prevents the Earth’s atmosphere from being stripped away.

Our atmosphere is believed to have formed after the planet cooled down and grew large enough to trap gasses around it, through gravitational force. Other gasses, such as hydrogen sulphide, methane, and carbon dioxide, were spewed into the atmosphere through volcanoes. It took about half a billion years for Earth’s surface to cool down and solidify enough for water to collect on it.

The early atmosphere was highly reducing and anaerobic microbes such as archaebacteria (such as methanogens, or sulphur-reducing bacteria) persisted until the advent of cyanobacteria, which flourished around 2,5 billion years ago. This resulted in oxygenic photosynthesis and oxygenation of our atmosphere for the first time.

“This global phenomenon is known as the Great Oxidation

Event (GOE),” says Professor Pierre M. Durand in the Wits Evolutionary Studies Institute. “The build-up of free oxygen in the atmosphere created suitable environments for eukaryotes [cells with a nucleus] or even complex multicellular life to evolve later in Earth's history. However, this phenomenon may have led to the extinction of various anaerobic [without oxygen] microorganisms at that time.”

The planet’s atmosphere gives us the environment in which we can live and breathe. It is also important as a temperature regulator and one gas plays a lifesaving role: Carbon dioxide (CO2) has a bad rap because of the role it plays in climate change, but it is needed to trap heat.

“The heat that gets trapped does not get reflected back into the atmosphere when the sun goes to sleep, and therefore keeps our planet at a habitable temperature for 24 hours a day,” says Scholes.

MOTION OF THE OCEAN

A global average mean temperature of between 16 and 18 degrees Celsius must be maintained, and weather worldwide plays its part in maintaining habitability on Earth. Helping drive these systems are oceanic currents.

“Ocean currents play a very important role in maintaining patterns of rainfall distribution as well as overall temperature on the land,” says Scholes.

Different forms of life have also emerged to play a role in weather. Vegetation type is linked to rainfall distribution. Keeping ‘the blue planet’, Earth, alive relies on a dance of different parts, where each must work in harmony, even when climate change threatens. But it’s not always a smooth ride and the best way to describe this, explains Scholes, is to compare these working parts to an orchestra:

“You’ve got some things that are constantly going on in the background, like you may always have a singular violin being played. And then every so often you might get a perturbation [disturbance] to the global planet. These are the cymbals coming in; this is something like a big riff, like a tsunami.” C

“If we were any closer to the sun, we would all fry. And if we were any further away, we would all freeze.”

FINDING FACTS IN A LIGHTNING BOLT

Lightning research will answer several questions about this lesser-known force of nature.

SHAUN SMILLIE SCHALK MOUTON

Asudden death out in the veld might have gone unnoticed by science if it hadn’t been for the witnesses who saw it happen.

What they saw was a giraffe struck by lightning. And not long afterwards that giraffe’s skeleton ended up at Wits University, and it was here that a group of scientists got an idea.

THE UNFORTUNATE GIRAFFE

Through the use of a high powered microscope, the research team that included Dr Hugh Hunt, Senior Lecturer and Head of the Johannesburg Lightning Research Laboratory (JLRL) in the School of Electrical and Information Engineering, and Dr Patrick Randolph-Quinney, a biological and forensic anthropologist at the Centre for the Exploration of the Deep Human Journey, both at Wits University, were able to spot a unique micro-fracturing pattern within the bone, which appeared to be caused by the passage of a lightning current.

PIGS, PEOPLE AND PATTERNS

The researchers then wanted to see if they could replicate the patterning through lab-simulated lightning strikes.

Pig bones were taken to Wits’ lightning lab and struck with artificially created lightning bolts. Then, the test had to be replicated on human bones, but because human cadavers could not be transported to the JLRL, the researchers had to take the lightning to the anatomy lab at W its.

High impulse currents of up to 10 000 amps were shot through the human skeletons and the same tell-tale micro patterning appeared that had first been observed on the giraffe. This research was published in the journal Forensic Science International

Those unique marks left on bones by lightning could be a big help to pathologists in future. Often lightning strikes leave classic ‘whodunnit’ cases, where a body is found in an open field with no apparent cause of death.

In South Africa it is not even known how many people actually die because of a lightning strike, although the estimates lie between 100 and 140 people per year. Farmers face a similar conundrum when livestock are found dead with no apparent cause of death. Dr Hugh Hunt, Head of the JLRL and co-author of the article, believes their research could also help in challenging dubious livestock insurance claims.

FLASH-IN-THE PAN MYTHS

Studying fatal lightning strikes is just part of the research in which the JLRL has been involved – there are myths to be debunked too. For example, the myth that claims that if we could

capture a lightning bolt, it would power a city for a year. Regrettably, lightning doesn’t work like that.

“You really can’t [power a city], it’s not enough energy. Even if you take the majority of the electrical energy in the world’s entire atmosphere, it just doesn’t come close to what we use to run cities and industry,” says Hunt, adding that a lightning strike is more like a bomb going off.

Research at the JLRI focuses more on saving property and lives through a better understanding of lightning.

Hunt says, “We don’t know enough about how exactly to predict where lightning is going to strike. We know that if you have a thatch house, we put up a big, tall, metal rod next to it, and that is more likely to be struck than your thatch house. But that’s still quite a rough model. For instance, we don’t know whether it is better to use a copper rod, or an aluminium rod.”

The JLRL’s work will become increasingly important as climate change could cause more lightning strikes in the decades to come. “There is a fair bit of evidence to show that things are definitely changing. It does generally look like lightning activity is increasing, but is it increasing with the same sort of intensity? With the same amount of current?” asks Hunt.

BOLTS FROM THE BLUE IN BRIXTON

To answer some of these questions, Hunt and his team have tur ned the 237m high Sentech Tower in Brixton, Johannesburg, into a laboratory. The tower receives at least 40 to 50 lightning strikes per year. With an average of 15 lightning strikes per square kilometre per year, Johannesburg is one of the most lightning-struck built-up environments on Earth, and thus regarded as the perfect place to study lightning.

Hunt’s team has kitted out the Sentech Tower (also known as the Brixton Tower) with a DEHNdetect, a device used to measure lightning currents. What they learn could one day protect other tall structures, such as wind turbines.

“This is where we get into the physics of what is happening in a single lightning strike and get back to our intention to better protect people and assets,” concludes Hunt. C

“We don’t know enough about how exactly to predict where lightning is going to strike.”

CAN WITS GO OFF THE GRID?

Wits’ drive to reduce carbon emissions began in earnest in 2016 when the University implemented its Energy Efficiency Programme. The Programme, allocated around a tenth of the University’s utilities annual expenditure and, began with several pilot projects, including replacing fluorescent light bulbs with more energyefficient and cost-effective options.

Jason Huang, Planning and Development Manager at Wits, explains that the University has had to overcome a range of difficulties, from limited financial resources to constraints of usable space (such as rooftops), and an old property portfolio. But now, seven years later, Wits is poised to adopt an overall sustainability policy and strategy.

“We have demonstrated project results and we have the support of management to continue the implementation of these types of initiatives,” explains Huang, referring to aspects of the Energy Efficiency Programme. “We’ve rolled out rooftop photovoltaic systems, converted hot water systems in all our large residences to more efficient gas and renewable technologies, and are switching to LED lighting.”

DIVERSIFYING ENERGY SOURCES

While going off the Eskom grid or becoming a net zero University is a tall order, Wits has begun introducing alternative energy sources to not only gradually reduce reliance on Eskom but to also ensure that the University’s operations are sustainable, explains Huang.

Although the benefits of solar power, one of the alternatives being introduced at the University, are obvious, blind spots remain. David Dorrell, Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering, suggests that solar power self-sufficiency “needs careful calculation and it is expensive. This [solar power] probably needs commercial partners and finance. Like all universities, the funding pockets are not that deep.”

Dorrell notes that some investigation is required to determine whether sufficient space exists for independent photovoltaic (PV) generation, which refers to the mechanism to convert sunlight into electrical energy. “Battery storage is also needed,” he says. “Though one of the advantages of commercial premises like a university – rather than domestic premises – is that energy tends to be used more in the day, when PV is generating, whereas for domestic applications, it tends to be more in the evening.”

Cutting greenhouse gas emissions to almost zero is the next big thing on the global agenda, but Wits academics agree that it’s not feasible on campus in the medium term.

SHOKS MNISI MZOLO

LIGHTENING THE LOADSHEDDING LOAD

Although Wits’ energy efficiency efforts are not a response to loadshedding specifically, they are well timed, as light at the end of the tunnel seems unlikely. “I fear that the loadshedding will continue and become the norm, and get worse,” remarks Dorrell, who traces the collapse of the power system to government mismanagement and failure to follow through on new generation policy.

Wits University already has generators for loadshedding, but Dorrell favours a mix of energy sources: electricity from the national grid, solar power, and diesel. Although diesel, used by commercial premises (including university campuses, government buildings, office parks and the like), is expensive, it could be used as peak-load supply, to augment solar power, for instance, and not just as loadshedding back-up, he adds.

GALVANISING WITSIES TOWARDS NET ZERO

While Huang is satisfied with the technological successes of Wits’ Energy Efficiency Programme, he would like to see the Wits community playing more of a role too. “As much as we have rolled out renewables and more efficient technologies, and continue to work towards reducing our load, we need to get people to consume energy responsibly,” he says.

In this regard, the University is accelerating awareness and education campaigns and the Office of the Pro Vice-Chancellor: Climate, Inequality and Sustainability, will roll out the Wits 20232030 Sustainability Strategy. Within this context, Wits University – and Witsies themselves – are poised to advance a just transition to an equitable, net zero carbon economy for the city, region, continent, and globally by 2050, in line with international protocols. C

TOP TIPS TO SURVIVE LOADSHEDDING AT HOME

GENERAL

• Switch off the lights when they’re not needed.

• Only boil the water that you need, or keep excess hot water in a good, insulated flask for tea/coffee or baby bottles.

• Switch off appliances if not is use, e.g., TVs, computers.

• Switch lights to LED or get rechargeable globes.

• Install a good geyser blanket to reduce heat loss.

• Geysers can also be switched on 1-2 hours before you need to shower (this only really works if a household doesn’t need hot water throughout the day).

• Switch to lower-flow showerheads to reduce hot water consumption.

• If you have mixer taps at home, use the cold-water side only unless you need hot water. By turning on the ‘warm’ or ‘hot’ setting, you are pulling water from the geyser into the water pipes and losing this heat.

• Dress for the weather instead of using aircon/heaters/ fans. Heat and cooling accounts for most of a typical household's electricity bill.

• In winter, minimise the small holes/slits/windows where cold air can come in (windows, bottom slit on doors).

FRIDGE

• Fill a few two-litre bottles with water and freeze them. When the power goes off, place some in your fridge and limit opening and closing the door. Keep the remaining frozen bottles in the deep freeze and only take them out once the others are down to about 25% ice. Rotate with more frozen ones if experiencing prolonged power outages.

• Don’t linger with fridge/freezer doors open for too long. This makes the chilled air escape and/or lets warmer air in. As a result, it takes more electricity for the fridge/freezer to reach the desired temperature.

COOKING

• Invest in the South African solution, the Wonderbag. This non-electric heat insulated bag works as a slow cooker and continues cooking for up to eight hours.

• A braai can save the day Stock up on charcoal or wood.

• Invest in a gas hob, the prices are increasing with demand.

CELL PHONE

• Keep your power bank charged and only use it when the power is off.

• Put your phone on low power mode to preserve battery life when expecting prolonged power outages.

• A phone charger in your car is a lifesaver!

OTHER SOLUTIONS

• Invest in an inverter system, or generator. Even the most basic system will give you a few hours of the minimum: lights, chargers, TV, and maybe a fan.

• A solar geyser, or a solar shower bag, kept full and in the sun, does a good job.

Solar panels on top of the Great Hall and Robert Sobukwe block at Wits University.

SKILLS FOR A GREEN WORLD

South Africa needs to reskill and upskill in the face of changing technology and shifting workplaces.

BETH AMATO

The Northern Cape is home to some of southern Africa’s largest renewable energy projects. One such project boasts 184 000 solar modules – enough to power about 162 000 homes. The land potential is being tapped but the surrounding communities remain mired in poverty and inequality.

“There is still high unemployment in the communities these renewable projects are situated in, no matter the growth and possibility that the green industry holds,” says Dr Presha Ramsarup, Director of the Centre for Researching Education and Labour (REAL) at Wits, whose research focuses on skills development for a sustainable and just world.

A just transition holds environmental sustainability, decent work, social inclusion, and poverty eradication as central tenets, but Ramsarup has found a disconnect between the quest to reduce carbon emissions and the urgency to create an equitable world.

“The skills and training needed to ensure this are unclear and contested in South Africa. Skills are often imported. Many shortterm job opportunities created are not linked to meaningful social inclusion, job fulfilment, or lifelong learning. ‘Skills’ are always tagged on at the end rather than integrated with industrial and technical planning,” says Ramsarup.

‘SKILLS SYSTEM’

The South African National Energy Association (SANEA) launched the South African Energy Skills Roadmap in January 2023. REAL partnered with SANEA to ensure that skills planning is central to climate adaptation and mitigation measures.

“Education and training have been reactive, leading with what the technology requires. This has created a fragmented landscape of interventions with no coherent planning for skills. We need to think about a ‘skills system’ that responds to communities’ real-life and changing concerns,” says Ramsarup, adding that the least is known about intermediate-level technical skills.

The renewables technologies training offered at technical and vocational education and training (TVET) colleges is often short course based and infrequently acknowledges the social context of these technologies. This ultimately provides an isolated solution when a multidimensional lens is required.

DATA DEARTH

One reason for the fragmented response is the limited mechanisms to aggregate data. REAL’s Dr Nicola Jenkin analysed job ads as part of her contribution to the Roadmap.

“We are told that green energy will provide thousands of jobs, but we don’t have any information to confirm this. We have no clear idea how many people are employed in the renewable energy sector; we don’t know how many people are studying renewable energy,” says Jenkin.

Her ad analysis revealed that the energy sector requires highly technical and professional skills – likely linked to the influx of independent power producers and new technologies. But there doesn’t seem to be clear learning pathways for young people. Ramsarup says that even entry-level jobs require skills planning but data on reskilling or retraining needs is also limited. Jenkin notes that “once construction is complete, plants need operational skills. We would like to see how a construction worker can retrain to continue working in the field, for example.”

MULTI-PRONGED APPROACH

Dr Rod Crompton, Director of the African Energy Leadership Centre at Wits, says employment opportunities lie in the construction of renewable energy infrastructure. Currently the photovoltaic and battery sectors are booming to meet industrial and residential demand.

“Are educational institutions equipping people with the skills to do this? For conventional energy there are adequate learning programmes – although there is a shortage of particularly higher skilled artisans, like coded welders. New programmes are needed for the new interdisciplinary skills necessary for sector coupling.”

Aside from educational institutions stepping up, government needs to come on board, too. “We are seeing that industry, not government, is leading the change to a just transition,” says Jenkin.

The Departments of Mineral Resources and Energy, Basic Education, and Higher Education and Training need to be critical players.

Ramsarup concludes: “We need a multi-pronged approach. One of these prongs is reskilling and upskilling in the face of changing technology and shifting workplaces.” C

‘CLEAN COAL’ – THE UNRECOGNISED GAME-CHANGING OPPORTUNITY FOR SOUTH AFRICA

Coal has a bad reputation, but ‘clean coal’ holds various potential opportunities, says Professor Samson Bada, Head of Clean Coal Technology Research in the School of Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering in a Q&A with Schalk Mouton.

IS THERE SUCH A THING AS ‘CLEAN COAL’?

The term is used to describe the use of coal with minimum to zero greenhouse gas emissions. Other gaseous emissions to be considered under the umbrella of ‘clean coal’ include Sulphur oxides (SOx), originating from the burning of sulphur-rich minerals found in coal, and Nitrogen oxides (NOx), the result of the combination of the nitrogen in air when it is exposed to oxygen at high temperatures. Other forms of emissions when combusting coal include fine fly ash (known as particulates).

WHAT ARE CLEAN COAL TECHNOLOGIES?

Clean coal technologies (CCT) refer to proven technologies that cut across the whole coal value chain, from the mining gate to utilisation, with the purpose of reducing emissions and solid waste. Within the power generation sector, some of the CCTs include carbon capture storage and utilisation, circulating fluidised bed, co-firing biomass/refuse derived fuel, and high efficiency low emission (HELE) technologies. These technologies aim to minimise the environmental impact of existing and planned coal-fired power plants. In fact, certain proven new technologies can now offer 100% emission reduction and the emissions, if captured, can now produce important marketable products.

HOW IS CLEAN COAL DIFFERENT FROM ‘NORMAL’ COAL?

There is increasing evidence that the ‘raw, normal or run of mine (ROM)’ coal can be of inestimable value for non-energy applications, namely to produce advanced lightweight highvalue high-tech materials such as activated carbon, carbon fibre, building composites, and electrode materials for batteries and supercapacitors (energy storage). When co-fired with biomass, the resulting pellets provide valuable ‘clean, low emission’ sources for power generation feedstocks. All these products are being investigated by Clean Coal Technology Research at Wits University.

WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF CLEAN COAL?

Renewable sources of energy are intermittent and therefore unreliable; they have a remarkably low energy density, and without fossil fuel, there would be no renewable hardware technology.

The future of coal is great. There are clean, coal-fired power technologies that could be retrofitted to current and old power stations. In addition, HELE plants and new smaller (modular) HELE independent power producer (IPP) coal-fired power units could be introduced in key areas of need. In short, coal is an extremely precious natural product and technology exists to use it cleanly.

Coal’s future extends beyond the production of electricity, namely, as the main driver of the circular economy. Advanced materials such as carbon fibre and carbon foam are expected to replace conventional raw materials such as steel, cement, and glass in the circular economy. Carbon fibres, coal-activated carbon, nanotubes and nanocarbons are future materials that are expected to be used widely in aerospace, electric vehicles, robotics and energy storage and they are an improvement on lithium-ion batteries. Furthermore, they can store natural gas and hydrogen. A company called X-MAT, in Florida, USA, has just developed the very first 18650 lithium-ion battery using coal and resin-based technology instead of graphite.

WHY IS IT SO HARD TO WEAN SA OFF COAL?

Coal is the backbone of this country’s economy and will continue to be the driving force behind the social and economic development of modern South Africa. The dependence on coal, both here and globally, is more than in power generation; it produces almost everything we use in our daily lives. Steel and its alloys are used in the manufacturing of cars, trucks, rail, shipbuilding, and machineries. Steelmaking accounts for 190 000 jobs in South Africa. For every 1 000 tonnes of steel produced domestically, R9.2 million is added to the GDP, three jobs are produced directly and another three indirectly.

WHAT ROLE DOES COAL PLAY IN THE RENEWABLE SPACE?

Coal is essential in producing renewable energies. The production of a single wind turbine needs coal and other fossil fuels for the manufacture of the steel, the steel towers and the concrete supporting the towers. In the production of solar panels, quartz is used because of its purity compared to sand. Fossil fuel is required in the mining and processing of quartz and for the high temperatures required to process the quartz to glass. Coal is also the carbon source for the electrode material in the batteries used to store renewable energy, and provides the pitch, used as a binder for the manufacture of high anodes for aluminium smelting in the ‘Hall–Héroult process’ [the major industrial process for smelting aluminium], which produces the solar panel frame.

To replace 100% of the country’s current coal-fired power plants in due course with renewables will require decades of planning, a new environment, and new intra- and inter-country transmission lines and a reliable form of baseload power for back-ups. Coal is a luxury which we in South Africa cannot do without. C

ON ANT(EATER) PATROL

We were discussing pangolins when Dr Wendy Panaino, a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences

(APES) explained: “Every decision an animal makes is based on whether it has the energy or not to do so.”

This quote struck me as pertinent, not just in the context of the pangolins she’s been researching for seven years, but in relation to Panaino as well. Her energy is incredibly dynamic, and this vibrancy comes across so clearly in our conversation, even though we’re chatting online.

With the pangolins, it’s the minutiae that fascinates her, and she’s in her element talking about these complex creatures – their physiology and how they function – although she’s not as expansive when it comes to figuring out the source of her own energy.

“Physically and physiologically, it shouldn’t make sense. I should not have the energy levels I have, given how little I sleep and what I eat,” she says with a huge smile.

“I think it’s life’s natural high,” she clarifies, and when you get to know her, even just a little, this makes so much sense.

ANIMAL ENERGY

Panaino's had to tap into this ‘natural high’ a lot over the years because of the demanding nature of her hyper-focused work with the elusive and endangered mammal.

As an ecology, environment, and conservation master’s candidate looking for a project to base her dissertation on, she stepped into a research programme looking to understand more about pangolins at Tswalu Kalahari Reserve in 2015, and she’s been there ever since.

Panaino upgraded her master’s to a PhD in 2017, continuing to pursue the pangolin project, as well as critical questions around climate change. She was awarded her PhD in 2021, and publishing her peer-reviewed work on pangolins in 2022, as well as a study on inter-species teamwork between Cape foxes and striped polecats in the southern Kalahari.

Her paper on pangolins asks if seasonal dietary shifts by Temminck’s pangolins compensate for winter resource scarcity in a semi-arid environment.

To answer the question, she literally spent days and nights –depending on the season, the rainfall, and other factors – tracking seven specific pangolins over a period of two years of field work.

If you’re wondering when she slept, the answer is she didn’t get much sleep at all. Pangolins are typically nocturnal so most of the research was done at night. This involved tracking them through the transmitters attached to their backs, going to great lengths to collect their faecal matter, and then much later, downloading information from the miniature temperature data loggers which were implanted and had to be removed to access the recordings.

Living to find innovative ways to solve tough challenges, Dr Wendy Panaino digs deep into the lives (and Kalahari Gold) of pangolins to find what makes them tick.

LEANNE RENCKEN

PANGOLIN POOP IS KALAHARI GOLD

Describing the research process, she says: “In the evenings, I would pick a pangolin and go and wait outside the burrow, sitting as quietly as possible, barely breathing in the cold and the dark because they’re super shy. If there’s any disturbance, they won’t come out. You depend on your ears to know when they’ve emerged, and then you follow them around on foot.”

Sometimes this would be for a couple of hours, sometimes an entire night. As she explains, she was totally on their schedule, not just when they were foraging, but when they were pooping as well. The faecal matter she collected came to be known by the research crew as Kalahari Gold, because it was so valuable to the research, and so difficult to come by.

Over the study period, Panaino witnessed what coping strategies pangolins need to employ during a cold winter following a hot, dry summer season, as well as how they operate during a winter following an abnormally wet summer season, how these extremes affect the choices they make about diet, whether to move around at night, or unusually, during the day, and the impact this has on their body temperature and energy.

BALANCING MAMMAL-ENVIRONMENT ENERGY

As both a scientist and a problem-solver, Panaino believes wholeheartedly in the power of conservation. On the one hand, she admits that things are not looking good for pangolins, but on the other hand, she says: “There are ways for the environment to buffer the effect of climate change. If you have a completely denuded, overgrazed area, are animals in those areas likely to die quicker or sooner than in areas where things are healthier, more balanced, and where there’s lots of grass growth and insects? We still have a long way to go, but this is the kind of prediction we are moving towards: If you have a balanced, healthy ecosystem, things are likely to be more resilient, and there’s potential for the ecosystem to do better.”

After her PhD, Panaino has focused on work that encompasses entire ecosystems. She has been involved as a project manager with a climate change research initiative called KEEP (the Kalahari Endangered Ecosystem Project), an umbrella programme under the Tswalu Foundation that oversees several projects at Tswalu, looking at how different species behave and respond within the ecosystem.

While she is still affiliated to KEEP, she’s moved into a research consultancy role at Tswalu, about which she is very enthusiastic. Working with Professor Andrea Fuller in the Wits School of Physiology, Panaino recently appointed a master’s student to continue working with the pangolins, having designed a research study to look into the purpose of the pangolin. “We’ve never quantified their role,” Panaino says, “and it would be enormously beneficial to do so.”

A PANGOLIN’S PURPOSE

We know they are driven by their need for energy, and to reproduce, but Panaino still wants to find out what the purpose of the pangolin is within the environment. She wants answers to questions like how much soil they turn over in a year and what their impact is on insect colonies, but she’d also like to be able to do more to better inform law enforcement regarding the illegal pangolin trade.

“In court cases, a judge might ask what kind of punishment should be given to the perpetrators who are illegally trading animals. We want to be able to say, well, this is what role they play in the environment, and so removing them will have specific consequences. Hopefully this will allow court systems to improve

their law enforcement and hand out more effective sentences.” she says.

“I like to have challenges, and to find innovative ways to solve them. Life happens and as a scientist you have to be open to adapt and evolve and develop. I actually don’t mind when things don’t go according to plan, it opens up room to change things and get creative. This is the exciting part!” C

PANGOLIN FACT BOX

As part of her PhD, Panaino calculated that each pangolin consumes around 5.6 million ants and termites per year. The study occurred during a particularly dry time, and with the rains during consecutive years, they ate even more. In conjunction with other ant-eating animals in the Kalahari (aardvarks and aardwolves, for example), pangolins play a huge role in regulating insect populations.

Pangolins do not actively seek free-standing water and meet their water needs from their prey.

Pangolins in the Kalahari are extremely fussy eaters, preying predominantly on two ant genera and one termite genus.

Although typically nocturnal, pangolins can shift their 24-hour activity to become diurnal under certain environmental conditions.

The pangolin navigation system is a total mystery – they forage throughout the night in zig zags, going from bush to bush. However, when it is time to go back to the burrow, they often go back in a straight line. Remarkably, this means they are not following a scent trail left behind that night.

Despite only walking on their two hind legs, pangolins can travel huge distances. One pangolin that was part of the Tswalu research study moved close to 40km – measured as a straight line within 10 days (although this was likely fewer days). Given that they don’t typically walk in straight lines, that total distance would have been much greater.

Pangolins are mostly covered in keratin scales and play host to various mite and tick species, demonstrating even more their value to the ecosystems.

In the Kalahari, pangolins tend to give birth to one pup per year in September. Elsewhere across their distribution, their breeding season does not seem to be so strictly defined.

Pangolin mothers never show their pups what to eat since they are rarely (if ever) seen foraging together. That means that the pup knows exactly which insects to go for purely by instinct.

OVERCOMING ENERGY POVERTY

LEANNE RENCKEN

In South Africa, with just under 90% of the population connected to the energy grid, there is no typical energy divide, explains Raees Dangor, a PhD candidate in the Wits School of Electrical and Information Engineering (Wits EIE). Rather, what we are experiencing when the national grid fails us, is universal energy poverty. That’s because it affects us all, from the suburbs to the CBDs to the townships, to our university campuses. The moment you are loadshed and you don’t have electricity to meet your basic needs, you are in a state of energy poverty.

The real inequality becomes apparent when we look at the 1% or 2% of the population who can afford to plug into alternative sources of energy to keep the lights on.

“Those who have the means to buy an alternative-to-grid supply, such as photovoltaic [solar], or a generator, can sustain themselves. But that is very costly. So, if we look at access to alternative-to-grid supplies, then I would say there’s a clear energy divide, because only the elite and the rich can actually afford to have that,” says Dangor.

THE ONLINE LEARNING POVERTY INDEX

It's this energy divide that’s captured Dangor’s attention and motivated him to design his PhD around a tool he built to measure students’ access to online learning. This tool, the Online Learning Poverty Index, considers energy poverty, the energy divide, the digital divide, and the learning environment.

As a founder and former business development manager at Peco Power, Dangor has been privy to several solutions introduced to address inequalities when it comes to online learning. Some of them he’s been directly involved with, such as the Wits Energy Access Project which, in 2021, supplied five solar systems to students in need. What concerns him is that these solutions only ever address part of the problem, and he’s hoping the tool he has devised will help provide a more in-depth and holistic overview.

ENERGY AND DIGITAL DIVIDES

“Simply having an Eskom connection, or using the rate of electrification, is a very crude and simplistic manner to really measure and understand a person’s electricity access,” he explains.

Researchers in the School of Electrical and Information Engineering are developing innovative solutions to quantify and counter the energy poverty that impacts teaching and learning and people without access to alternatives to the grid.

“When we transitioned to emergency remote teaching at Wits at the onset of Covid-19, everyone had to work online and from home. Our poor and under-privileged students were really affected by the energy divide, but also the digital divide. The electricity they do have doesn’t work that well, they don’t have laptops and computers or internet access in the rural areas, and so several schemes were launched to try and close the divide.”

The schemes he refers to include the University’s partnership with network providers to supply students with 30GB of mobile data, the availability of loan devices, as well as Covid-19 related National Students' Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) allowances, amongst others.

Dangor’s PhD, titled A Multidimensional Approach to Online Learning Poverty, looks at the suitability of schemes such as these, which while helpful, are not comprehensive or universal enough to apply to everyone – especially considering our current situation, which has only gotten worse since Covid-19. It was the pandemic which ultimately acted as the catalyst for us all to consider learning and working from home solutions.

POST-COVID BLENDED LEARNING

Dangor explains: “The South African energy crisis has worsened. Stage 8 loadshedding is on the cards and there is the threat of a national blackout. This compounds the challenges of working from home. Many students still do not own digital devices, nor do they have reliable internet access at home. At the same time, blended learning is a prevalent trend at Universities, meaning that a significant amount of higher education content will be delivered through online channels. It’s inevitable that many students will be forced to work for extended hours at the University given their challenges at home. The University is obligated to make provisions. Those who are unable to spend extended hours at the University need to also be considered. A deep understanding of online poverty is thus essential for the successful implementation of blended learning and, in the long term, the achievement of universal access to higher education.”

And this is exactly what Dangor hopes to achieve. Based on the Alkire-Foster method used for measuring poverty and wellbeing, Dangor has tailored his tool to investigate South Africa’s access to online learning and uses it to make enquiries around three dimensions of poverty, namely digital, energy, and learning environment.

The digital dimension enquires about a student’s access to devices such as computers, laptops, tablets and smartphones and the availability of an internet connection.

The energy dimension counts the number of utility grid connections – typically 98% of students have one – and the

number of alternative-to-grid connections, which only around 1% of students have.

The learning environment checks the students dwelling type which may be formal or informal. However, knowing that the students polled are attending an urban institution, data is skewed towards ‘formal’. It is only when Dangor drills down to these students’ access to a workspace that the data gets interesting. Even though most students live in formal households, a lot of them don’t have a dedicated workspace.

“Looking at all these aspects, and using my tool to measure them, allows me to understand where we need to make provisions and who specifically is suffering the most, because that’s where we need to start, that’s our target,” he says.

Once Dangor’s tool can generate a view of what resources people really need to overcome online learning poverty, he can share this valuable data. Those providing solutions can then create interventions that make a real difference.

This application is not limited to tertiary-education students; it can be used by corporates, and those in the banking sector, engaging in work-from-home strategies, and in rural environments where children are being on-boarded into the online learning space.

POWER BRICKS AND FIBRE SHARING

One of the interventions Dangor is keen on seeing being put into practice is the combined potential of Peco Power’s power brick used in conjunction with the Fibre Before the Fibre project.

The power brick is an off-grid technology that incorporates a battery and inverter. The battery can be charged from any source, including solar or the grid, but it’s true value lies in the fact that the ‘plug and play’ solution can be expanded with the simple addition of more bricks to generate more power, for home use, or even better, en masse to power a community or school.

Couple that with the Fibre Before Fibre Project and you’ve got a power bundled with connectivity solution.

The Fibre Before Fibre Project is being developed by Dr Mitchell Cox in the Wits Optical Communication Lab. It is an ingenious method of sharing internet access using long-range wireless optical communication technology between those who have it (such as fibre to the home in affluent areas) and those who don’t, but who perhaps live just across a road or valley in the city. The project, which originated at Wits and has acquired international university partners, is currently being piloted.

Both ventures were developed by teams at the Wits EIE. On their own, each of these projects is impressive, but their potential to change lives when used in conjunction with Dangor’s tool is where the real brilliance lies. C

Dr Mitchell Cox and MSc student Fortune Iga in the reflection of a 'Fibre Before the Fibre Project prototype.

The Peco Powerbrick.

EDUCATING SCIENCE STUDENT-TEACHERS ABOUT ENERGY

Energy is one concept important to Bachelor of Education (BEd) graduates who go on to teach in the sciences.

Curiously, despite its position as a link between Physics and Chemistry, interdisciplinary science education remains rare in the classroom. Furthermore, teachers are under pressure to finish the curriculum on time, leaving little or no room to do other things, nor shine a spotlight on energy, for instance.

RELEVANCE

“The course must be relevant to the daily life of each student. Relevance is the first step,” says Physics Education Senior Lecturer, Dr Emmanuel Mushayikwa, in response to how the Wits School of Education prepares BEd students for their future role as teachers of the subject.

“We have two target components – content and methodology. With the latter, we teach them how to teach. My argument, even for the content component, is that you must make it relevant to the daily life of the student-teachers for it to make sense and be very well understood.”

While discussing relevance, Mushayikwa refers to the dynamics of greenhouse gases being taught in the context of Chemistry. He was encouraged by the response that the content component elicited from his students, because it was presented in a manner that proved relevant. Likewise, energy as a topic is taught from a point of relevance.

“Discussing energy more could help us find some answers and solutions to our crises, such as energy insecurity,” he explains, then zooms in on a recent example from the lecture hall, namely a joint lecture that he and the late Honorary Professor John Bradley, who had been involved in chemistry education, delivered in April 2022. The joint lecture focused on the theme of energy from both the physics and chemistry perspectives.

“Students liked the fact that the topic of energy was introduced together with Physics and Chemistry. When we talk about electromagnetic radiation, that’s energy. In Chemistry, they look at things such as chemical reaction, chemical change – that’s energy. Turning on the stove gives you an intersection of physics and energy – and it happens in the kitchen every day. Every learner would know this. It’s all about relevance.”

CURRICULA CONSTRAINTS

“Despite energy’s central importance to both Chemistry and Physical Sciences, there is little or no encouragement to interdisciplinary and systems thinking,” notes Professor Peter Moodie, a Visiting Lecturer in the Wits School of Education who is involved in science and technology education curriculum development.

“The concept of energy gets attention in the [high] school Physical Sciences curriculum, but separately and differently in the Physics half and the Chemistry half,” he explains. The Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) is South Africa’s official curriculum for all school-going learners.

“We are looking for ways to introduce our students to systems thinking, and unifying ideas – such as energy – that cut across disciplines. For example, we have presented them with an interdisciplinary approach to electricity by treating voltaic cells and circuit behaviour as one topic.”

A further example of how the WSoE is transcending the silo tradition and pursuing novel, innovative ways of teaching and learning is by presenting circuits and cells as a physics-chemical system.

RETHINKING SCIENCE EDUCATION

In the era of renewable energies, Moodie worries that the dearth of skills could continue to stalk South Africa. He advocates a paradigm shift on the part of both educators and BEd students, towards systems thinking. He encourages urgent national attention to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal number seven, which calls for affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all by 2030.

“Clean energy systems help us deal with climate change, so the challenge for a science educator is to introduce the physics and chemistry of new technologies such as fuel cells using green hydrogen, battery storage, photovoltaics, and wind turbines, for example,” says Moodie. “The curriculum should reflect the realities of practical science and scientists.” C

SHOKS MNISI MZOLO

How good is a science curriculum that’s insulated from working scientists or that ignores climate change and sustainable development?

AFRICA IS GETTING HOTTER

Continued extreme heat exposure is affecting the health of vulnerable groups in communities.

MARCIA ZALI

With extreme heat conditions increasing because of climate change, Wits scientists have been amongst the experts who have been sounding the alarm on the sometimes deadly impact of heat exposure on humans.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), health is one of the areas on which increasing temperatures in Africa will impact. Mortality and morbidity (death and disease) will increase with further global warming of above two degrees Celsius, which will also increase the distribution of vector-borne diseases, mostly in west, east and southern Africa. Vector-borne diseases are infections transmitted by the bite of infected arthropod species, such as mosquitoes and ticks.

HIGH-RISK HUMANS

While the impact of the high ambient temperatures has, over the years, been highlighted as an environmental crisis, there has also been growing concern over how human lives have been affected by the hot weather conditions.

Although all humans living in regions in Africa have experienced heat waves, some have had life-threatening reactions that are suspected to have been triggered or exacerbated by the heat. These vulnerable groups include those on chronic medication, people with cardiovascular disease, pregnant women, the elderly, infants, people with disabilities, and outdoor workers.

Research Professor at the Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Institute (Wits RHI), Matthew Chersich, says that scientists have observed concerning summer heat that has been rising over the years, particularly in low-to-mid-latitude regions, places with humidity-enhanced heat stress, and regions that experienced extreme dry heat with temperatures of up to 40 degrees Celsius or more.

Human beings operate in a specific thermal niche, Chersich says, with a set of physiological thresholds – or hard biophysiological limits – that correspond to thermal comfort, heat stress, organ system compromise, and death.

“Deadly heat arises when conditions of air temperature and humidity surpass the physiological threshold for human

adaptability. Core body temperatures can reach lethal levels under sustained periods of apparent temperatures of 35°C or more,” explains Chersich.

THE HARDEST HIT BY HEAT

Due to these temperatures, excess deaths and hospitalisations have increased over the years, with the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) reporting that while African statistics in heat emergencies are scarce, and only eight out of the 196 events that were reported globally came from the continent.

South Africa officially reported 11 deaths related to severe heat but researchers studying excess deaths through temperature correlations found very high mortality burden associated with warmer weather.

“Excess deaths during extreme heat events occur predominantly in older individuals and are mostly related to the cardiac and respiratory systems,” says Chersich. “Higher temperatures, especially marked heat fluxes, increase asthma, pneumonia episodes and pneumonia-related mortality, and may compound the impact of air pollution.”

Less severe heat-exposure outcomes – such as lethargy, headaches, rashes, and cramps – negatively affect children in school and play environments. Under extreme heat conditions, hospitalisations and trauma centre visits increase for fluid replacement, renal failure, urinary tract infections, septicaemia, general heat stroke, as well as unintentional injuries.

A HOT TOPIC FOR AWARENESS

Dr Albert Manyuchi in the Global Change Institute (GCI) at Wits explains that while communities had been experiencing extreme heat conditions, and the health effects obvious in relation to diseases, the effects of heatwaves are poorly understood.

Yet, despite poor understanding of the effects of heatwaves, communities have found ways to manage in those conditions.

“In Agincourt, where we assessed the current knowledge of heat health effects on human health, we found that community perceptions on heat impacts on health were mainly related to illnesses and diseases, with no understanding of mortality risk,” says Manyuchi. “We also found that although healthcare workers were aware of how to manage the health-related effects from the heat, more awareness campaigns that encompass the full range of heat-health impacts are needed to reduce vulnerability, morbidity and mortality,” he added.

Agincourt [Matsavana] and Acornhoek [Khenhuk] are towns in Bushbuckridge, Mpumalanga, and home to the Wits Rural Campus where more than 30 surrounding villages and 21 000 households comprising some 120 000 individuals have participated in public health and health transitions research since the late 1980s.

DEARTH OF HEAT-HEALTH DATA

A study by Manyuchi and Chersich, et al, in 2022, on extreme heat events, high ambient temperatures and human morbidity and mortality in Africa, found that there is an urgent need to develop heat-health plans and to implement interventions in Africa.

Manyuchi says their systematic review found gaps in early warning systems and that community communication needs to be more accessible and the language understandable.

“Africa is not prepared to adequately deal with the rising temperatures that we are going to face in the future. The weaknesses in health systems mean they are not able to respond to climate-related crises adequately. Observation systems need to be in place and consistent capturing of data needs to be done,” says Manyuchi.

PLAN FOR HEAT WAVES

Chersich says that although strides are slowly being made to prioritise health in addressing climate change, many underlying health and social systems need to change. Furthermore, the rapid rate at which weather systems are changing has also contributed to the lack of preparedness in African countries.

According to him, a more targeted approach, where a package of selected interventions is implemented, may be a more effective option than trying to improve the overall health system, and more attractive for policy makers and funding agencies.

“Preparing for heat waves is an important first step. This involves creating national or regional early warning and information systems, heat wave plans and guidelines, and raising public awareness through campaigns,” says Chersich.

“Key actions from the health sector include providing dedicated public cooling shelters, securing the availability of clean water and simple water purification systems in low-income settings, surveillance of heat-related diseases, outreach to vulnerable populations, and extended hours for public pools or other water bodies.” C

“More awareness campaigns that encompass the full range of heathealth impacts are needed.”

ENSURING A JUST ENERGY TRANSITION IS COMPLEX. HERE’S WHY…

Focusing on the dynamics in the electricity sector, Professor Imraan Valodia and Julia Taylor outlines some of the challenges facing a just energy transition in South Africa and suggests what can be done.

An energy transition involves shifting away from coalpowered electricity generation, as well as the use of other fossil fuels such as oil and gas, which we rely on for transport and various industrial processes.

South Africa’s electricity crisis is reaching its peak in the context of a warming climate, which necessitates urgent decarbonisation of the economy. We also face high levels of unemployment, inequality, and poverty. These challenges are all significant and require careful policy and action to ensure that in addressing the prior concerns, the latter are not exacerbated. At the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS) we are researching these issues to recommend appropriate policy responses.

A just energy transition is required to balance the social and economic issues with the environmental imperative to decarbonise. Energy provisioning is fundamental to a successful economy, shaping it in many ways, and making an energy transition inherently political.

The role of the state is therefore important to navigate the transition. In line with most other countries, our energy system is largely centralised, with Eskom key to the generation, transmission, and distribution systems. From a generation perspective, the system is regionally concentrated in the Mpumalanga province, which is responsible for about 60% of total generation capacity.

ENERGY POVERTY

The problems in the energy system are, however, not restricted only to issues of generation and loadshedding. A just energy transition must also address energy poverty, which is a problem for many South Africans. Energy poverty is defined as a lack of access to or the inability to afford energy, and is calculated by assessing the proportion of household income spent on energy.

Although 84.7% of South Africans can access the national grid, there are many people who cannot afford electricity tariffs, which have increased dramatically over the past few years (Stats SA, 2019). Research in 2021 shows that the rate of energy poverty in South Africa was 58%, which has significant impacts on health and well-being, as well as limiting income generating activities.

Thus, addressing the crisis in all its complexity involves regulation that governs the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity and other forms of energy, and how energy is priced and consumed by all South African businesses and households. The shifting regulatory system will have implications for access to electricity and the Free Basic Electricity framework may need to be revised to ensure comprehensive coverage for impoverished populations.

EQUITABLE ENERGY GEOGRAPHY

There is also a complex set of spatial issues, since the shift to renewable energy means a decentralisation of generation from Mpumalanga, to the solar and wind energy hotspots in the country, specifically the Northern Cape and the Western Cape, which are more efficient for solar and wind generation.

Decentralisation of generation impacts the transmission of electricity via the national grid because the grid has been built to deliver electricity from Mpumalanga to the rest of the country. The grid is not easily able to deliver electricity in the opposite direction. This is the reason for the announcement in December 2022 that the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme Bid Window 6 was only able to proceed with six projects, despite many more being eligible.

The lower uptake of projects in Bid Window 6 is also due to the expansion of private generation on the grid, which has occurred since the lifting of the cap of 100MW in 2021, but the failure to plan for grid capacity upgrading now constrains the system. This type of failure in planning does not bode well for the energy transition. The privatisation of electricity generation requires an overhaul of policy and regulations to ensure that energy poverty is not exacerbated.

THE COALFACE OF JOB LOSSES

The decarbonisation of the electricity sector will involve the decommissioning of coal power stations and will result in the loss of jobs and livelihoods associated with the coal value chain. Data from 2019 suggest that the number of people employed in the coal value chain is over 120 000. While the development of renewable energy power plants will create jobs, these jobs will be in different locations, require different skills, and will be largely in construction, which usually means temporary employment. While planning has started on supporting workers, too often informal workers, who are likely to be women, are not factored into these plans. Therefore, there is an urgent need for action to support those who will lose their livelihoods in the form of social services, economic diversification, and social protection.

More broadly, the energy transition could have the effect of fundamentally changing South Africa’s industrial structure, with major implications for the nature of the country’s mining and industrial sector. Our economy is currently based on the use of cheap, coal-based electricity in mining and downstream industries, such as the chemical and metal industry. As the global economy shifts to non-carbon energy, the demand for certain minerals, such as platinum, is likely to increase significantly. It is imperative that researchers and policy-makers start to understand what these changes are likely to be, and for our regulatory system to be adapted to ensure that the transition is indeed just. C

Professor Imraan Valodia is Pro ViceChancellor: Climate, Sustainability and Inequality and Director of the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS) at Wits. The SCIS is a multidisciplinary cross-country initiative for research and policy-change to promote greater equality in the Global South. A Professor of Economics, Valodia’s research interests include inequality, climate justice, competition policy, employment, the informal economy, gender and economic policy, and industrial development. He is recognised nationally and internationally for his research expertise in economic development. Valodia is a member of the Presidential Economics Advisory Council and the Competition Tribunal.

“Our economy is currently based on the use of cheap, coalbased electricity in mining and downstream industries, such as the chemical and metal industry.”

A COUNTRY WORTH FIGHTING FOR

South Africa is a country on the ropes.

Schalk

My chakras are misaligned, my aura is waning, and my meridians are all clogged up. I am so drained of energy, that even my reiki therapist refuses to take my calls.

Waking up in the morning, the house is in darkness. The solar battery has run out after working overtime the previous two days when the electricity failed to come on after loadshedding. Getting up, I knock my head on the cupboard and trip over the cat – a cliché, but even clichés have a way of worming their way into brutal reality. In the kitchen, I sit down for a moment while coming to grips with the fact that I have to start my day without coffee – as far as I am concerned, the only scientifically-proven natural remedy for restoring an intermittently fading aura.

On my way to work, I risk my life on multiple occasions trying to cross intersections where the traffic lights are either out, or blinking red. Not that they matter, because if you do actually stop at a traffic light in Joburg, you run the risk of someone driving into you from behind.

At work, I climb the seven storeys of stairs – twice – as I forget my cellphone’s power bank in the car. Finally, I stumble into the office, sit down at my desk, stare at the dark screen of

Its critical infrastructure, including its energy supply, is crippled.

Mouton asks whether we, as South Africans, still have some fight in us to win our country back.

my computer. As I shake the last few grinds out of my coffee container, I once again call my reiki therapist ‘The number you have dialled…’.

A DARK HOT POT

Yup. We are all here, living the same life, drowning in the same dark lake. And the lake just seems to get deeper. Whenever you feel you should be touching ground, the ground shifts, putting you right back in the deep water. It’s like a dream from which we never seem to awaken. We are the frogs in the pot of boiling water.

In the last few weeks, the wheels have really started to come off where energy is concerned. Yes, the whole world is in an energy crisis; a catch-22 situation where, while we all need to produce more energy to cater for growing populations, we need to transition to untested ‘cleaner’ energies to make sure we fight climate change. However, in South Africa, it feels as if that pot is just becoming unbearably hot.

Thinking about getting out of this cauldron reminded me of a conversation with my friend, Ant, at a braai over the holidays. Ant is one of many who in the last couple of years packed up and left to live ‘abroad’. A year or two ago, Ant emigrated to Zimbabwe. Yes. Emigrated. To Zimbabwe.

Of all the people sitting around the dinner table that night, Ant was the only one who looked refreshed, with a smile on his face. The rest of us – all South Africans – looked frayed, battered, and as if we couldn’t wait for dessert to be served so that we could get home before loadshedding trapped us in darkness.

ZIM-SEMIGRATION

When Ant decided to emigrate to Zimbabwe, he was the joke of the town. Nobody thought he was serious. Even the Zimbabwean Home Affairs Department didn’t know what to make of him, as nobody emigrates to Zimbabwe. Ever. Ant’s emigration application took almost a full year, as Zimbabwean Home Affairs had to custom design and print his application forms, as such things didn’t exist.

These days, Ant could not be happier. Living in Harare suits him. He runs his family guest house as well as a travel business, and generally lives a carefree life.

About 12 years ago, when a group of our friends joined Ant on a trip to Mana Pools on the banks of the Zambezi river, we unknowingly had a glimpse into our future. Our trip took us through Harare, where we stayed over at Ant’s sister. At the time, it struck us as extremely funny that households in Harare did not have either electricity or water for much of the day, and families had to plan their days around times when they had these luxuries to do the necessary cooking, bathing the children, and to read their books – things that require electricity. Imagine that! Today, Ant says, that is part of history. People in Harare have no such problems anymore.

PEOPLE POWER IN A FRONTIER TOWN

Like most other residents in Harare, Ant supercharged his house with enough solar panels and batteries to power-up Koeberg power station, and still have electricity to spare. While Zimbabwe is something of a frontier town where not much works, residents band together and have found ways around most of their challenges. If you know the right channels and are willing to pay the right price, you can get anything you could ever want.

Every now and then, at a certain public parking space in Harare, a container truck arrives from South Africa. As it starts to unload, residents flock to pick up their orders, which may include anything from luxury watches, cricket bats or other sports equipment for the kids, to groceries, flat-screen televisions, garden furniture, and, yes, you guessed it, full solar systems. With their arms full of loot, they return home and everything is hunky-dory.

The reason that Ant and most of his new countrymen are so happy-go lucky is that they have given up hope. The citizens of Zimbabwe have learnt to rely on themselves, and nobody else. They have given up hope that their currency would recover (most of them have plenty of US Dollars – the currency in Zimbabwe –but they can’t get the money out of the country). They have given up hope that they will have a regular supply of water or electricity, that they will have any form of a functioning law enforcement agency, or any sort of government service. What they have, they have built, bought, managed, or arranged themselves. They are content with life as it is and have very few hopes and wishes that anything will change.

We in South Africa, on the other hand, still cling to some hope that things might miraculously improve. We have been watching our little pot simmering for decades, hoping in vain that things don’t boil over. In the first quarter of 2023, it seems, where energy supply in the country is concerned, things have come to the boil and South Africa’s electricity supply – like so many other critical infrastructural services – has broken down beyond repair.

Perhaps, to keep some semblance of sanity, we as South Africans should take a leaf out of the book of Ant and his fellow Zimbabweans, and give up hope. If we don’t care about not getting government services, then we won't have anything to worry about. If we look after ourselves, our families, and our neighbours, we can wangle our way through life without grandiose hopes of growing the economy, living in a country that is respected in the international community, having a currency that holds some value in the world, and being able to build a happy prosperous life for our children and their children in the country that we all love.

Taking matters into our own hands in this way, however, means that we are giving up hope. And by giving up hope, we admit that there is nothing in this country still worth fighting for. It is a sad state of affairs indeed.

But South Africans have shown that we refuse to just lie down and take things for granted. In 2019, we managed to reduce the heat in our little pot down to a simmer, when we all took to the streets to get rid of the main instigators of state capture. The question is, is there still enough fight in us for our country reeling with battle fatigue?

If you ask me, I say: “Hell yes! There is!” C

SELLSCHOP’S NEUTRINOS AND AN ELUSIVE ENERGY

Right now, there are about a billion neutrinos – abundant tiny subatomic particles – streaming through your hand. They’ve travelled light years to where you stand and are proof that humans are essentially stardust and sunlight.

BETH AMATO

Neutrinos are sometimes referred to as ghost particles because they’re tiny, massless, and have no electric charge. They’re famously difficult to detect, but during the years they’ve been studied, they have answered fundamental physics questions.

In a deep underground mine in South Africa in 1965, one Professor Friedel Sellschop, who had, at the age of 26 founded the Nuclear Physics Research Unit at Wits University in 1956, observed that elusive neutrino particles occurred in nature. This was a major development and a step beyond where they had previously only been found: as man-made particles emanating from a nuclear reactor.

‘LIKE SOME WATCHER OF THE SKIES’

Sellschop’s makeshift nuclear lab had been blasted out of rock three kilometres deep down the mine, and it is here that he could isolate the impossibly vague signal emanating from a neutrino. In this moment, it is said that he quoted Keats’ ode to Homer: “‘Then felt I like some watcher of the skies/when a new planet swims into his ken’.”

Sellschop then devoted himself to the development of diamond physics. Diamonds, he said, were the Earth’s most profound messengers, answering questions about the Universe’s origins. Furthermore, his work contributed to the potential use of diamonds in tech material, resulting in nine registered patent applications.

SCHONLAND TO ITHEMBA

The eminent professor was greatly admired by the world’s physicists for conducting pioneering experiments with little to no resources. Indeed, his laboratory in basic and applied nuclear

physics was nothing short of world-class. The Wits Nuclear Physics Research Unit became the Schonland Research Institute for Nuclear Sciences and after its incorporation into the National Research Foundation in 2004, is now operated by iThemba Labs. Sellschop’s positions at Wits included Dean of the Faculty of Science and later Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Research from 1984 to 1996, after which he retired.

Now in the 21st century, Wits University bestows the Friedel Sellschop Awards annually to recognise and encourage young researchers. The awards are underwritten by a research grant made available by the University’s Research and Innovation Committee to qualifying researchers.

Sellschop was a true scientist until his death in 2002. Even while retired he was in search of the next earth-shattering discovery. Sleep was an inconvenience; if he was tired, he’d jump into a cold pool and then, fully awake, he’d continue to work. Scientific discovery is ongoing and Sellschop’s contribution was one of its fundamental universal building blocks. C

iSOURCES:

• PBS News Hour for the description of neutrinos

•Sunday Times, obituary by Chris Barron

•Mail & Guardian, tribute

Creative Commons

Creative Commons

Setup view of Antares neutrino detector

Peco Power (Pty) Ltd was spun out of Wits University to commercialise the Smart Mini-Grid developed by the Wits School of Electrical and Information Engineering to power homes without access to electricity. Read the story on pg. 48.

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