Energy efficiency and carbon management winner: Greening Durban 2010 Programme.
Durban has committed itself to hosting a carbon-neutral 2010 Fifa World Cup event, the only host city to do so. ‘We wanted to host the event in an environmentally sustainable way,” said Michael van Niekerk, an environmental consultant on the project.
But it is an ambitious goal — the Durban leg of the event will produce approximately 306 000 tons of CO2. Construction and development for the World Cup, buses and cars, air travel and the demands of extra people all produce a large carbon footprint, but Durban has started a number of projects to offset it.
Three weeks ago the Mail & Guardian questioned whether Durban’s ambitious goals were in fact a greenwash or praiseworthy, but the Greening judges were impressed by how far the Durban municipality had gone and the measures it was taking to ‘green” the event.
The judges were also impressed the city had done an impact study on the risk to Durban if the climate changes and sea levels rise. The adverse impacts, including severe storms, are the reason the city must act now, it said in its Greening the Future submission.
Green programmes
The city has set a list of greening principles, approaches and strategies the municipality must factor into infrastructural projects that are being undertaken. ‘These green principles will ensure that the Moses Mabhida Stadium and its surrounds are sustainable and leave a positive legacy,” Van Niekerk said.
The project has not only demonstrated the benefits of going ‘green” but has developed a ‘green” knowledge base that can be integrated into future policies and standards, he said. The project aims to change mind-sets about energy, water, waste and transportation in the city.
Greening Durban aims to minimise energy consumption by improving efficiency at all 2010 venues. It will implement renewable energy projects, such as the western aqueduct
mini hydro scheme and a number of carbon sequestration projects.
Trees, trees and more trees
More than 62 500 trees were planted in the first phase as part of the city’s efforts to stage a climate-friendly World Cup. The city teamed up with the Wildlands Conservation Trust to green the area near the Buffelsdraai landfill site in Verulam, the city’s biggest rubbish dump.
Residents of Verulam who used to have uninterrupted views of a garbage mountain will soon wake up to a fledgling forest of indigenous trees. Apart from the aesthetic benefits, the trees will absorb many of the smells associated with landfill sites.
Durban’s municipality also acquired 900ha of land, which was formerly used for sugarcane farming. One hundred hectares will be used for garbage disposal, but the balance will be encouraged to return to its natural forest and grassland state.
Treepreneurship
Also part of Durban’s greening is the Indigenous Trees for Life programme in KwaMashu. The Wildlands Conservation Trust has started the ‘treepreneurship” scheme to reward people who grow trees from seeds. ‘Last year we were able to collect the trees in one day and now it has taken us three days to collect all the trees from the treepreneurs,” said Paul Makhanya, project manager.
Treepreneurs from townships and rural communities were taught how to propagate and care for trees until they reach a certain height. The trees are then traded back to Wildlands in exchange for goods such as food, clothes, school fees and uniforms. Some of the trees are planted in the community or go to Wildlands’ forest restoration projects.
Greening the stadium
Van Niekerk and his team claim the energy footprint of the new stadium was reduced by 30%, or approximately 1.2-million kWh a year, because of its sustainable building design, which maximises natural light and ventilation.
‘The need to adopt a ‘green’ building design was included in the tender brief for the new stadium and, while it is difficult to quantify the added benefit, the contribution to a reduced need for energy in the stadium is substantial,” he said. Energy efficient measures such as energy-saving lighting, heat pumps instead of element geysers and a central chiller for air conditioning were implemented in the stadium.
Carbon offsets
Van Niekerk said it was initially estimated that the Greening Durban 2010 Programme would need to offset between 150 000 tons and 180 000 tons of CO2 to achieve its target of hosting a ‘carbon-neutral” World Cup. ‘However, when the footprint was recalculated as information on the scope of events to be held and travel arrangements became available, this increased to 306 000 tons of CO2,” he said.
‘Of this estimated carbon footprint, the new Moses Mabhida Stadium accounts for 190 000 tons or 62% of total expected carbon emissions.” The stadium’s large footprint is in part due to the massive steel arch, which had to be imported. This also significantly increased the carbon footprint of hosting of the event.
‘This is an unusual approach in that normally only a proportion of the construction footprint would be allocated to a single event’s use of such a facility,” he said. ‘The effective outcome of this process is that the Moses Mabhida Stadium is probably the first and only stadium in South Africa that is carbon neutral in terms of its operation for the 2010 World Cup.”