Methane gas being flared from Bisasar Road Landfill site

Laying solid foundations

Inventory paves the way for City’s GHG drive

ECOSERV has been instrumental in eThekwini Municipality’s drive to address its responsibilities to climate disruption, says Jessica Rich, Policy Coordination and Implementation Coordinator of eThekwini Municipality’s Environmental Management Department.

The first step in the City’s ongoing commitment to reduce greenhouse gases - primarily carbon dioxide and methane - and alleviate climate disruption was to identify the City’s main sources of GHG emissions. To this end the Environmental Management Department contracted ECOSERV to develop an inventory of municipal GHG sources with funding through ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability.

“ECOSERV did the foundation work in terms of establishing a baseline for GHG emissions for municipal activities,” says Jessica. “The volume of GHG emissions was important but more significant is that the information allowed us to precisely target and monitor emissions by sector.”

According to the inventory of GHG emissions, eThekwini municipal operations gave rise to 1.248 Mt CO_2eq (equivalent tons of carbon dioxide) from 1 July 2003 to 30 June 2004. Significant contributors to GHGs within the municipality were electrical distribution losses, waste storage, power for streetlights and buildings, vehicle emissions and sewerage treatment. Emissions from each sector were quantified and rated in importance.

“ECOSERV’s allocation chart has been instrumental in enabling us to identify contributors to GHGs and design and implement programmes to address key priority areas,” says Jessica. “It also allows for heightened awareness among key city stakeholders.”

The GHG inventory was driven by ECOSERV team members Thandi Mfenqa, Quentin Hurt and Firoze Bhorat, who captured information from municipal information providers relating to electricity usage and landfill waste.

The inventory has been compared to the City of Cape Town’s and the two cities are broadly consistent. Overall comparison suggests that eThekwini’s emissions are 18% higher than those of Cape Town’s, largely on the back of higher waste-associated emissions. Limited comparison with the city-wide or community emissions indicate that the Municipal emissions are approximately 6% of those for eThekwini’s as a whole.

"As a result of the emissions inventory, energy audits of two administrative buildings - eThekwini Health and eThekwini Water and Sanitation – were undertaken which identified a number of no-cost and low-cost energy savings opportunities," said Manisha Maganlal, Environmental Officer for the Environmental Management Department. “These were to make improvements in lighting and air-conditioning arrangements to reduce hours of operation and enable more flexible control, optimising refrigeration plant operating parameters; minimising unnecessary electricity base-loads and improved management of small power loads.”

The audits reveal that if the low-cost and no-cost opportunities are implemented, the annual saving would be in excess of 400,000 kWh per annum, or 15 % of the buildings’ combined energy usage in under five months. Furthermore, annual CO₂ savings based on low-cost and no-cost measures alone would be 340 tonnes.

“By trimming the timer on the air-conditioners in both audited buildings, we can save 128t CO₂ /year and R53 400/annum. A further 214t of CO₂ per year can be achieved by implementing other low-cost options as identified by the energy audit,” said Manisha.

Manisha said the next step was to secure additional funding and roll out the Buildings Energy Efficiency Pilot project to the rest of the municipality’s building stock.

Also in an advanced state are plans to introduce power-from-landfill gas schemes on three municipal landfill sites with the two-fold benefit of reducing methane gas emissions and generating renewable power.

“This has been a great project from our perspective,” says Quentin Hurt of ECOSERV. “Not only are we dealing with an extremely motivated client, but we have seen marked improvements in the data collection systems over the two years and now real action as a result of our data. The eThekwini Municipality and the Environmental Management Department are to be congratulated for their leadership in their efforts to address their impacts on climate change.”