International roundtable looks at building the world's largest dam in Congo
Earlier we sketched the huge but unrealised potential of the Inga dam on the Congo river in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Since the 1970s, engineers have been dreaming of building a dam at the natural rapids some 100 kilometres downstream of the capital Kinshasa. In theory, the 'Grand Inga' would be the world's largest. With its 42,000MW capacity it would be bigger than the Three Gorges (18,000MW) and the Itaipu (14,000MW) combined. The dam could power Africa out of energy poverty, and would even sell excess electricity to Europe and the Middle East.
We referred to the Inga project in the context of biofuels, for a clear reason. The countries bordering the Congo river - the Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo - are all potential biofuels superpowers. The Congo river would be the main transport hub bringing biofuels and biomass downstream to Kinshasa, where the green feedstocks would be converted into finished products, notably liquid fuels. But the conversion of biomass requires energy itself, which is why Inga is so important: abundant and cheap electricity would make Congo-basin biofuels very competitive and ready for export to the world market. Of course, for the time being this is a futuristic scenario and much has to be done to turn it into a reality (earlier post).
The first step is being taken, though. Some of the continent's major financial and political bodies are organising an international round table in Johannesburg, South Africa, from October 5-6 in order to arouse donor interest in the hydroelectric potential of the Inga in the Nkokolo valley in the DRC. The African Development Bank (ADB), the African Union (AU), and the the New Partnership for the Development of Africa (NEPAD) are the main organisers and have summarized the objectives of the round table as follows:
bioenergy :: biofuels :: energy :: sustainability :: hydroelectric :: dam :: Inga :: Congo :: Africa ::
The African Development Bank carried out a study between 1993-1998 to evaluate the feasibility and viability of power interconnectivity between the Inga in DRC, Egypt, the Central African Republic, Chad and Sudan. The World Bank has just completed a study on the rehabilitation of the existing infrastructure, and the ADB is planning a holistic study that will look at the viability of further development of the site.
More than 60 representatives from governments, international organizations, public sectors, private sector, donor agencies, development partners, NGOs and the civil society are expected to participate in the round table.
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We referred to the Inga project in the context of biofuels, for a clear reason. The countries bordering the Congo river - the Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo - are all potential biofuels superpowers. The Congo river would be the main transport hub bringing biofuels and biomass downstream to Kinshasa, where the green feedstocks would be converted into finished products, notably liquid fuels. But the conversion of biomass requires energy itself, which is why Inga is so important: abundant and cheap electricity would make Congo-basin biofuels very competitive and ready for export to the world market. Of course, for the time being this is a futuristic scenario and much has to be done to turn it into a reality (earlier post).
The first step is being taken, though. Some of the continent's major financial and political bodies are organising an international round table in Johannesburg, South Africa, from October 5-6 in order to arouse donor interest in the hydroelectric potential of the Inga in the Nkokolo valley in the DRC. The African Development Bank (ADB), the African Union (AU), and the the New Partnership for the Development of Africa (NEPAD) are the main organisers and have summarized the objectives of the round table as follows:
- to mobilize development partners’ support for the development and exploitation of Inga hydropower potential
- to inform donors, investors and potential consumers of the potential of the hydroelectricity project to provide enough power to meet energy needs and requirements of DRC, a large number of African countries, as well as provide surplus energy that can be exported to Europe and the Middle East
- to register declarations of interest from investors and potential clients to enable effective and planned development of the Inga
- to seek the views and input of development partners and all parties (including NGO's and civil society organisations) interested in the project into the orientation of a planned feasibility study for further development of the Inga Hydropower Site.
bioenergy :: biofuels :: energy :: sustainability :: hydroelectric :: dam :: Inga :: Congo :: Africa ::
The African Development Bank carried out a study between 1993-1998 to evaluate the feasibility and viability of power interconnectivity between the Inga in DRC, Egypt, the Central African Republic, Chad and Sudan. The World Bank has just completed a study on the rehabilitation of the existing infrastructure, and the ADB is planning a holistic study that will look at the viability of further development of the site.
More than 60 representatives from governments, international organizations, public sectors, private sector, donor agencies, development partners, NGOs and the civil society are expected to participate in the round table.
Article continues
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
FAO's new vegetable oils statistics
The new FAOSTAT is already available from the FAO website. It comes with complete global coverage, cross-domain integration, a fully refined user interface and increased data transparency. A new national version, CountrySTAT, has been under development and is being released in a score of pilot countries. It will offer a two-way bridge between national and international statistics on food and agriculture.
10 million records downloaded every day
FAOStat is currently the world’s largest and most comprehensive statistical database on food and agriculture. It contains over 1 billion data points, 40 million of which are updated annually. The current core of FAOSTAT contains a full matrix of integrated and compatible statistics coverage of 200 countries, a period of 15 years, and more than 200 primary products and input items. The FAOSTAT site receives over 10 000 daily hits and 10 million records are downloaded every day. “This is a twenty-fold increase just over the last 5 years,” Mr Kasnakoglu indicated.
Oils, oil seeds, cakes, meals and protein
We use the FAOStat database often to learn more about the bioenergy potential of a country. One series of data we look at is that of vegetable oil production, to get an overview of the biodiesel production potential (for example, we are analysing the differences in palm oil yields between a highly productive country like Malaysia, and Central African countries; we see that African plantations yield much lower, because of several reasons (bad maintenance, low fertilizer use, low press yields, and so on). This leads us to conclude that old plantations might be replanted with new high-yielding palms, which would boost output. This potential in Africa is large. So without expanding the hectarage, and without new deforestation, old plantations can be replanted and yield much more than they currently do).
In the earlier version of the statistical system, it was difficult to compile one's own databases on this specific topic because data were fused in combined records. In the new version, an entirely dedicated section on oils has been included, where different production indicators are seperately presented. The "Oilseeds, Oils, Fats, Cakes and Meals" database lists yearly maintained entries on gross exports and imports, on indigenous exports, and on production, for the following oils and byproducts (this is a non-exhaustive list): castor beans (oil), coconut (oil, copra meal, copra protein), cotton seeds (cottonseed oil, meal, protein), groundnuts (oil, cake, protein), hempseed (oil), linseed (oil, cake, protein), maize (oil), mustard seed (oil, meal), olive (oil), palm fruits (oil), palm kernels (oil, cake, protein), poppy seed (oil), rapeseed (oil, cake, protein), rice bran (oil), safflower (oil, cake, protein)sesame (oil, cake, protein), soya (oil, cake, proteine), stillingia (oil), sunflower (oil, cake, protein) and tung (oil). Added to this are specialty oils and extracts, plus data on animal oils, meals and cakes. The data are available for all countries, and start from the year 1993. A subsection is devoted to oil seeds with records on crush capacity and rates, imports/exports and production [entry ends here].
biodiesel :: biomass :: bioenergy :: biofuels :: energy :: sustainability :: database :: statistics :: oils :: FAO ::
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posted by Biopact team at 6:22 PM 0 comments links to this post