Why the rush?

Our Environment Minister approves of renewable energy featuring strongly in the future energy mix of the country. Indeed, IRP 2010 was largely driven by some strange ideas about a low carbon future.

The trouble is that renewable energy is a relatively unproven technology, and therefore risky. The Danes are having to sell half their wind energy at a considerable loss; the Texans are griping because power costs have soared as conventional stations have been forced into inefficient start/stop operation to accommodate surges; the Chinese are having to switch off wind power to keep their power plants running, because the power plants also send hot water to homes and factories for warmth.

What is the Environment Minister doing in areas about which she knows next to nothing? The simple fact is that renewables are expensive. IRP2010 showed this.

For instance, nuclear capital costs are about R27000/kWh installed, and wind about R14500. However, the nuclear plant has a life of 60 years and yields about 85% of its installed capacity every year. The wind installation has a life of about 20 years and yields less than 30% of its capacity. That means that the capital cost is about 6c/kWh for nuclear and 28c/kWh for wind. Operating costs are around 15c/kWh for nuclear and 9c/kWh for wind.

There is no contest - if you want affordable low carbon, you should be into nuclear power.

The end of the affair

Ending relationships is always painful. We try to avoid the pain by delaying as long as possible. All that happens is that things get worse, until parting becomes inevitable.

In 1953 I opened my first bank account with what was then called Barclays Bank. Fifty-eight tumultuous years and several name changes later, the bank abandoned me, so I am now leaving it. It will be painful, it will take time and cost, but when you receive the message that your bank couldn’t give a damn, then it is time to move on.

Not that the relationship has been smooth over all these years. There was the memorable moment when I nearly found myself inside a jail in Iran. The brand-new $100 bills the bank had given me were counterfeit, which was instantly spotted by the Iranian money-changer. On my return to South Africa, I paid the ‘surplus’ dollars back into my account – and then warned the bank they were fakes. I am still waiting for an apology.

Or there was the time when I was a struggling young professional. Something I came across suggested a very profitable investment – but I had no cash. So I asked for an overdraft. I had an interview with my bank manager, who told me that, as I was already mortgaged to the hilt, the bank could not assist me. Over the next three weeks, I watched helplessly as my expectations came true. Then I went into the bank on other business, and the manager came out of his office to thank me for a really wonderful tip.

Or the moment when my credit card was frozen as I landed in France. Because I was heading for a remote area, there was little I could do about it for nearly a week. Seven days of bread and water followed, before I found that the freeze was because I had not taken the precaution of advising the bank that I would be overseas. It mattered not that I had paid for flights, cars, hotels and travel insurance via the card. The first transaction in a foreign land had blocked the card “for my protection”.

Could it get worse? Try three weeks of bread-and-water. In Naples my pocket was picked. The credit card went. I had advised the bank of my intended absence, so there was a possibility that it could be used. However, one phone call, and the card was blocked and a replacement promised. Yes, it should get to me within three days – “We care about our platinum card holders!”

When it didn’t arrive, a phone call showed that the process of issuing the card was stalled because the bank hadn’t received confirmation that I was a South African resident and that I intended to return (as they hadn’t asked for confirmation, it wasn’t surprising). The delay meant I had to change the delivery address from Naples to Rome – I could expect the card in three days.

More calls from Rome, and several promises that I would be contacted, all of which were broken. With three days to go, I demanded to speak to a supervisor. He was all unction; really apologetic that my holiday was being ruined; and promised faithfully to have the new card couriered that night so that it would reach me before I left Rome.

I did the sensible thing, and requested the document tracking number so I could contact the courier company. I was given a very wrong number. It became clear that it wouldn’t reach me in time – so I requested that the courier company be asked to change the delivery address. “No problem!”

Finally it was delivered to Rome. By then I was in Florence, but I had left a trail, and Rome called up to report receipt. €70 of courier fees and two days later, a new card was finally mine.

My troubles were not over. The card needed activation. The letter of transmission assured me I had only to call the bank. I called, and was told it was impossible – I had to go through a verification process.

The process required a PIN, but I couldn’t receive a PIN, because the PIN was being SMSed to my SA cell phone. Could they please send it to me by email – the same email used to send me my monthly statements? Not unless I got a PIN. Catch-22 is alive and well. I returned to SA with an unused card.

Telephone calls to get the new card had cost about R1200. Throw in the courier fees, and about R2000 was wasted on what should have been the simplest exercise. A holiday had been seriously affected. The bank has been silent. It clearly couldn’t care less.

I’ve got the message. After fifty-eight years I’m off to pastures new. I don’t know they will be any better – but they couldn’t be much worse.

How Government gets nationalisation wrong!

Susan Shabangu, our Minster of Mineral Resources, has said that there are no signs of disinvestment as a result of the talk of nationalising mines. The Minister needs to learn that there is a big difference between investment and disinvestment.

Investment means money flows in. That demonstrably isn't happening, because there are no new mines opening in spite of the minerals boom. Talk of nationalisation is only one reason for this - lack of energy is another, lack of infrastructure a third. There is the billions invested in Richards Bay Coal Terminal to get the capacity up to 90 million tonnes a year, and the railways struggle to deliver 60 million. At today's prices, that is a loss of foreign exchange of around R3 billion annually. The loss of a return on investment is perhaps another billion.

Disinvestment means money flows out - and the reason why money isn't flowing out is because no-one wants to buy the assets because of the threat of nationalisation. So she is right for all the wrong reasons!

Paying for free housing

Minister Tokyo Sexwale has announced that the scheme to provide free housing for the poor will soon come to an end.

We were all poor once - and no-one offered us free housing once we had left home. Another answer to provision for the poor must be found.

Perhaps the German solution merits deeper investigation. From the 1870's onwards, when the German peasants wanted to move to the city, they could sell their 'tribal right' to land. This gave them cash to house themselves in the city. Those who did not wish to move could buy land with a state-funded mortgage. Germany never had shacks.

We need to allow people to sell their tribal rights to land - and use some of the money generated to pay the chiefs for their losses. That way some of the tribal land which is exceedingly arable can be brought under modern farming and make a contribution to our well-being, while those wishing to move to the cities would have the funds to do so.

Ecoterrorism is rife

In the runup to COP17, the horror stories are flowing thick and fast. The latest to cross my path came from a recent capacity-building workshop on reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries (REDD+) . "Deforestation and forest degradation produced about 20% of total human-caused GHG emissions on a yearly basis."

There is absolutely no basis for this statement. It is typical of the horror stories dreamed up to coerce us into foolish action.

Total consumption of timber is around 1400 million cubic metres a year, most of which comes from sustainable forestry. Total consumption of fossil fuels is around 10 500 million tonnes oil equivalent. Burning oil produces far more CO2 than burning wood. So the "20%" figure is more like 1%.

You can lie for only so long before you are found out. These ecoterrorists need to learn that simple lesson.

The Law of the Engineer

As an engineer, I had to learn that Murphy’s Law really is a Law, not some wishy-washy rule. For the uninitiated, the Law says that if something can go wrong, it will. Note, “it will”, not “it may”. There is an awful finality about the Law. It is inescapable.

So when we engineers design something, we have to resign ourselves to the fact that it will almost certainly fail. Its failure will be unexpected – a ‘black swan’ event – but fail it eventually will.

Fortunately we learn from our mistakes. What we design gets better and better all the time. My first car was a Morris Minor. It had a hole in the centre of the front bumper. When the starter motor failed, you took out a crank handle, put it through the hole, and turned the engine by hand until it started.

When the starter motor failed, not if. In the 1950’s the starter was expected to fail. Over the years, starters have become more and more reliable. No longer do cars come with crank handles.

This simple example is repeated over and over. I once travelled fast in a 1926 Bentley. Its chassis was positively alive, and the slightest bump would send the car off course. The Bentley had been the finest machine of its day. It won at Le Mans several years in a row. But today its road-holding would make it impossible to sell. The designers of cars have learned from their mistakes.

The result of this continual improvement is that unexpected failures become rarer and rarer. In the motor industry, there are occasional ‘recalls’ when an error appears in one of the many systems that make up the modern vehicle. They are rare, so rare that they are newsworthy.

Much of modern life benefits from the continual improvements we engineers have made. However, we can never forget that Murphy is peering over our shoulders. The latest example was Fukushima. The designers knew that if cooling was lost, it would be a disaster, so they designed backup pumps that would keep cooling water flowing. Then they recognised that the power to the backup might fail, so they installed generators to supply power if the normal power supply failed. If the generators should fail, there were batteries to keep things going until the generators could be restarted.

When one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded struck, the reactors shut down as expected. The power lines failed, so the generators kicked in. For an hour, all was well. Then Murphy arrived, in the form of a wave that was twice as high as anyone had conceived. The generators were flooded, the batteries battled on until they had run out of energy, cooling was lost and the reactors were destroyed.

Everyone has learned from this disaster. It will not happen again. Nuclear reactors will become safer. But they will never become perfect. Perfection is impossible. At best, accidents will become more and more infrequent, and lower and lower in their impact.

But whatever we do, Nature will invent more ways to defeat our best-laid plans. Murphy is ever present. That is the Law by which we engineers are ruled.

Misplaced passion

I am a passionate person. I am happy to share my passions with others, which is why I write here.

However, passion is a dangerous emotion. The passionate have to take care they they use the force of their passion constructively. It is all too easy to be destructive.

I have long felt infinitely sad for those in the animal rights movement who have expressed their passion by violence. People work with animals to try to find ways of alleviating human suffering. If you don't like them working with animals, then you should strive to find another way of curing human ills. That is the constructive use of your passion. The destructive use is to attack those who work with animals, because ultimately you are hindering their attempts to relieve human suffering.

One of my many passions is a belief in an open society, one in which we should be free to express our beliefs without fear or favour. Thus I have a hatred of propaganda. I like the definition "Propaganda is -- a systematic form of purposeful persuasion that attempts to influence the emotions, attitudes, opinions, and actions of specified target audiences for ideological, political or commercial purposes through the controlled transmission of one-sided messages (which may or may not be factual)" [Richard Alan Nelson, A Chronology and Glossary of Propaganda in the United States (1996) pp. 232-233]

When I saw the video Gasland, I soon realized it was a good example of propaganda. Finding out that it really did give a one-sided message which in many places was anything but factual took a little time. Fortunately my quest was aided by others who had reached the same conclusion. An epiphany came when I found a You-Tube of Gasland's producer, Josh Fox, admitting that he had known that the "flaming water" was a long-standing phenomenon that had nothing to do with fracking. Since then I have been passionate about revealing the propaganda for what it was.

The debate has generally been fruitful. My opponents have been courteous, knowledgeable in their own way, happy to share their concerns, and willing to consider that their concerns could be addressed. The debate has therefore come down to ways of ensuring that fixes could be achieved. Once the concerns had been reliably addressed, exploration via 'fracking' was reasonable.

I, for my part, have had to stress that no fix is perfect. Murphy's Law is alive and well. But one of the beauties of engineering is that it does get better and better - we do learn from our mistakes. So the risk of the fixes failing is likely to diminish with time. As one concern is addressed, another will be found to take its place. Ultimately the de minimis rule will kick in, and all will accept the tiny chance of failure that remains.

But there is O'Toole's rider to Murphy's Law - he said "Murphy is an optimist!" I said that the debate has generally been fruitful. There are exceptions to this rule, point blank refusal even to discuss concerns, outright rejection of the possibility of another view.

The latest example of this has been an invitation to a musician to play to a group of us. Negotiations proceeded slowly, but finally we agreed a significant fee. Then, with a week to go, came a surprising email "Since my last email I have read some of your blogs. I do not wish to be associated with you or your crew. I am vehemently against Fracking. I will also not support the pursuit of profit without regard for its humanitarian and environmental impact."

I was not previously aware that 'my crew' would be deemed to share my passions - in fact, I am certain that they share a few, and equally certain that they hold contrary views about many others. I don't mind vehemence - some of those with whom I have debated have been quite vehement, and it expresses passion well.

However, passion can blind, and surely it has in this case. One of my passions happens to be music, and that is one which I share with the musician - and with many of 'my crew'. The musician has allowed one of his passions to get in the way of another. That is as good an example of the destructiveness of passion as I know.

Shakespeare, how now your Romeo and Juliet?