Climate change at Sci-Bono

16 February 2011, newsUpdates.co.za
URL: http://newsupdates.co.za/climate-change-at-sci-bono-247288.htm

Moves by South Africa's big five cities to beat climate change are on show at Sci-Bono. In Joburg’s corner are Rea Vaya and Cosmo City, among others.

Climate change – and what the big five South African cities are doing to fight it – is the subject of an exhibition at Sci-Bono Discovery Centre in Newtown.

The City's Rea Vaya buses are the cleanest on the continent South African Solutions to Climate Change, as the exhibition is called, ends on 13 March. Included in the displays are exhibitions on landfill gas and energy projects; commercial wind farms; integrated, sustainable, low-income housing; green municipal vehicle fleets; LED traffic lights; reforestation projects; and reducing energy wastage in municipal buildings, among others.

The exhibition was unveiled at the 15th Climate Change Conference Of Parties (COP 15) in Copenhagen in 2009. The focus is climate change technologies and projects that have been undertaken by Johannesburg, eThekwini, Ekurhuleni, Cape Town and Sedibeng.

Many of the initiatives taken by these cities have been supported by the government of Denmark as part of the Urban Environment Management Programme (UEMP), which is run in partnership with the departments of Water and Environmental Affairs.

The UEMP and its partner cities have received technical support from Sustainable Energy Africa in implementing their projects. This programme, which ended in 2010, built the institutional capacity of South African cities to improve service delivery to the poor through effective environmental resource management.

Dan Frederiksen, the Danish ambassador to South Africa, says: “Denmark is proud to be associated with efforts to green South African cities. The programme has improved the livelihoods of many poor households in the five big South African metros [Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni, eThekwini, Cape Town and Sedibeng] and has demonstrated that green technologies can help reduce electricity bills and pollution and thereby create economic opportunities and wellbeing.”

Some 16 technologies and projects implemented in cities to help build climate resilience are being exhibited.

Rea Vaya
One of Joburg’s key interventions, the Rea Vaya Bus Rapid Transit system, represents a major turning point in how the City deals with pollution and greenhouse gases caused by transport.

Rea Vaya buses are the cleanest on the continent, running on low-sulphur diesel that has the most advanced pollution reduction equipment. This reduces the most dangerous health risk from vehicular emissions, nitrous oxides, by thousands of tons a year; particular matter is also reduced by hundreds of tons annually.

The City has installed solar water heaters in Cosmo ... Read more at Joburg