Kenya Mobile Carrier Goes Green

Global telecommunications provider Huawei has teamed up with Kenyan mobile phone company, Safaricom, to give "green solutions" on powering its base transmission equipment.The wind-solar-diesel solution is based in a Masai community a short drive from the Kenyan capitol. Like many rural communities, the area is not covered by the national electricity supply grid, and many residents use wind turbines to power their homes.[John Barorot, Safaricom Chief Technical]:"When we build our network more in the rural areas the presence of KPLC (Kenya Power and Lighting Company Ltd) was too far away and was not viable to extend the power lines any more. That is how we came up now with this initiative to use solar, to use wind power especially where we have good wind speeds. The site also uses two diesel generators as a back up power supply.



[John Barorot, Safaricom Chief Technical Officer]: "On our more then 2,000 base stations country-wide, each one of them has a generator with diesel. In fact, we consume up to 700,000 diesel per month."Severe drought and low water levels in the dam that power the hydroelectric plants have increased the power supply’s inconsistency.



[John K Tanui, Huawei Technical Service Director]: "We provide products that can enhance reduction of use of power and in this case we had one solution which we provided to Safaricom."However, regular refueling and maintenance costs are high, and diesel generators produce high volumes of harmful gas that pollute the environment. After installing the wind turbines and solar panels, fuel consumption was down 95 percent. Fuel transport and regular maintenance costs have dropped by at least 90 percent.


The new green energy lets Safaricom look for more eco-friendly solutions and resolve the power bottleneck.

Reference: http://english.ntdtv.com/ntdtv_en/ns_me/2009-10-06/707472033139.html

The Science of 350!

350 parts per million is what many scientists, climate experts, and progressive national governments are now saying is the safe upper limit for CO2 in our atmosphere.
Accelerating arctic warming and other early climate impacts have led scientists to conclude that we are already above the safe zone at our current 390ppm, and that unless we are able to rapidly return to 350 ppm this century, we risk reaching tipping points and irreversible impacts such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet and major methane releases from increased permafrost melt.
There are three numbers you need to really understand global warming, 275, 390, and 350.
For all of human history until about 200 years ago, our atmosphere contained 275 parts per million of carbon dioxide. Parts per million is simply a way of measuring the concentration of different gases, and means the ratio of the number of carbon dioxide molecules to all of the molecules in the atmosphere. 275 ppm CO2 is a useful amount—without some CO2 and other greenhouse gases that trap heat in our atmosphere, our planet would be too cold for humans to inhabit.
So we need some carbon in the atmosphere, but the question is how much?
Beginning in the 18th century, humans began to burn coal and gas and oil to produce energy and goods. The amount of carbon in the atmosphere began to rise, at first slowly and now more quickly. Many of the activities we do every day like turning the lights on, cooking food, or heating or cooling our homes rely on energy sources like coal and oil that emit carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere. We're taking millions of years worth of carbon, stored beneath the earth as fossil fuels, and releasing it into the atmosphere. By now—and this is the second number—the planet has 390 parts per million CO2 – and this number is rising by about 2 parts per million every year.

Complete Story at: http://www.350.org/about/science