On giving to the charities Heifer International and Smile Train

This post is a little outside the usual frame, but arises from that little bump of curiosity that keeps me writing these posts.

Background - For Christmas this year the Advocate had asked that we donate to a couple of charities that he supports: the Heifer International operation and Smile Train. Both of these are nationally advertised operations that function at above the $120 million per year range, and have received considerable positive publicity. Since I found more answers to questions I hadn’t initially thought to ask in a brief look at both operations, I thought I would pass on what I found. It may bear a little on your choice of giving.

Heifer International provides a catalog from which you can select animals, from camels to fish fingerlings, that the organization will provide to individuals in poor areas of the world, providing them not only with additional nutrition but also a way of starting a small business, as an aid to breaking their cycle of poverty.

My curiosity arose initially because I wanted to find out if there was any particular piece of livestock that would give a higher rate of return on the investment than others. My thinking was, illustratively, that perhaps it would be better to donate to buy a water buffalo, rather than a heifer, because of the additional work that the animal would be able to carry out, as well as providing milk, manure, and ultimately dinner. I had some fun for about an hour trying to tease out different rates of return, a heifer in Malawi could generate up to $130/month in milk revenues - helping to feed the family, while selling some milk, generated $60 a month in Uganda. On the other hand water buffalo in the Philippines would quadruple farm production, but still only up to $42 a month. Pigs could generate $45 a month (but how many?) and two alpaca will create 4 lb of wool a year at maybe $6 a lb, or just $2 a month – they must have other benefits. While the actual benefits weren’t always clear, as I poked through, my original choice of livestock didn’t look too bad until I came to a disconcerting post which pointed out that my research had actually been time wasted.

For the post pointed out that, had I bothered to read it, that this is what it said, at the bottom of the donation page.

To help the most number of families move toward self-reliance, Heifer does not use its limited resources to track gift animals from donation to distribution. Gifts made through this catalog represent a gift to the entire mission. We use your gifts where they can do the most good by pooling them with the gifts of others to help transform entire communities.

I must confess that, when making the donation I did not bother to read that small print at the bottom of the page, which may have now been changed to

The prices in this catalog represent the complete livestock gift of a quality animal, technical assistance and training. Each purchase is symbolic and represents a contribution to the entire mission of Heifer International. Donations will be used where needed most to help struggling people.

Now it is understandable that tracking individual gifts may be difficult and expensive, and I really did not expect that I would hear that a particular family had received the buffalo (see this video of what might be done), but I had hoped that someone (and in my imagination it was in Nepal) would get a buffalo, and now I was left wondering about the funding and where it actually might be going. There are, it turns out, other beneficial things that are being done with the money apart from the mission that is most heavily advertised. They help start farmer organizations and work with the International Red Cross in bringing war widows and Untouchables into the Nepalese community.

I also found a note which describes the policy in more detail.

Heifer provides community groups with livestock if and only if they request it after training in community values and studying the available resources. If they submit a strategic plan showing how they will care for the animals, how having livestock will substantially increase their livelihoods, then and only then does Heifer provide support. And then we ask that they source animals locally and “pass on the gift” of offspring AND TRAINING to others. The farmers use manure as organic fertilizer to increase crop production, plant trees to preserve the environment, raise honeybees and worms for composting, and on and on.

The Charity raised some $133 million in contributions in the year ending June 30, 2008, with the outgoing CEO getting some $288,912 in compensation. The overall organization had a paid staff of some 332 at the time, and fund raising used about 14% of contributions. Apparently the charity has also built a “Global Village” down in Arkansas, that has received some criticism since it detracts from the overall mission. (I suspect we will be travelling to Arkansas in the none-too distant future.) It appears that the charity had some 928 active projects, in 54 countries in 2009. It was sufficiently worthy that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave it $42.5 million (and they are reputed to do a fairly thorough review before they give the money). In the current annual report support is stated as being given to 1,000 families, with typical project support lasting over five years. And in the latest report it also gives some of the information that I started out looking for:


The average income gain from the project is $3,808 in Albania (equal to the average per capita income). In Nepal it is $572 (against income of $427) and in Uganda it is $1,456 (against an average income of $490).

Looking at the relative return on investment for donors - in Albania the ROI (annual dollar income per dollar for livestock) is 9.46 for cows; 7.51 for goats and 10.6 for bees. In Nepal it is 3.7 for cows, 2.87 for buffalo, 1.79 for goats and 0.8 for pigs. In Uganda it is 2.6 for cows and bulls, 5.72 for dairy goats but 9.75 for meat goats, while pigs bring in 8.32 and fish return 11.22.

However as Heifer notes the income is not the only benefit. Firstly the recipient has to pass on one offspring to another recipient in order to sustain the program, but then the recipient also has a steady long-term increase in assets that come from the additional offspring that the original gift produces. Thus, in Malawi, 90 initial beneficiaries are expected to grow to 130 families by the end of 2012. And in Uganda 118 original gifts of heifers produced offspring that were handed on to a second wave of recipients, so that, to date, some 223 families have been assisted.



This does, however, resurrect the question over how many different gifts of livestock are made each year. Typical projects are of about five year duration, with the first year being one of instructing the recipient on how to care for the gift, and in preparing the “compound” (livestock must not be allowed to roam and graze, but are fed within this enclosure which helps with collection of manure for fertilizer). The second year is where the recipient receives the gift, and, depending on species, at the end of that year or during the next, the first recipient will initially raise and then pass on an offspring to a second beneficiary. (It is not clear if the process continues thereafter with that second recipient also having to pass the “first child” on in turn, so geometrically multiplying the benefits over time). There are two more years of monitoring to ensure that the health of the gift and the economic welfare of the recipient, and to integrate the individual into a community to better market the product. The initial recipient also keeps (or sells) any additional offspring. For example one of the success stories told in the 2006 report was of a disabled Chinese farmer who received an initial gift of 12 goats in 2002. By the time of the 2006 report the family had increased the herd size to 230 goats (as well as passing on the 12 gift goats to other farmers). It is this kind of growth, that leaves the farmer independent and successful, that is a major goal of the program.

Perhaps I can express my concern, however, better with another example. From 2005 to 2009 the Moutori Livestock Development Project in Burkina Faso provided 400 chickens and 80 roosters to 120 original families. If we take the donation cost of the chicks, say 120 times $20, then the livestock cost is $240. The overall project cost was, however, $148,644 (project 21-1203-70).

Put another way, the goal in 2005 was to give livestock to 1 million families over 10 years. That is some 100,000 a year, but since this includes pass-ons from the original recipients. Heifer International only supplies livestock to 50,000 families a year. If each donation is the equivalent of a heifer (though it may be three or four goats, or perhaps two water buffalo) then the initial livestock cost (as defined in the catalog, and that seems about right) is $500 per family. 50,000 times $500 is $25 million. (And that is making a generous assumption, since as shown with the chicken example, livestock costs may be a lot less). With the charity taking in more than $133 million a year, it does point out that the animal supply part of the program, the donations for which provide the vast majority of the income for the charity, sees less than 18% of the income. Now that is not to say that the rest of the activities of the charity are not worthwhile and necessary, but it is not quite the way I had thought my donation would go. Putting it in perspective, while I thought we were contributing a water buffalo, the actual livestock part of our donation was more likely to have been one of those chickens. Ah well, as was said about the Harding and Coolidge Administrations who had put a “chicken in every pot,” that is a step toward prosperity, but it is not "one giant leap for mankind."

Which brings me to the Smile Train. It is important here to distinguish this charity from Operation Smile which has basically the same goal of treating impoverished children born with cleft lips and palates, and has been around a little longer. The founder of Smile Train was apparently once involved with Operation Smile, and started this similar charity in 1999, though with a different approach to the problem. In contrast with Operation Smile which sends American surgeons abroad to carry out the surgery, a practice for which it has been criticized, Smile Train relies on training and funding local surgeons in best practices.

Number of surgeries performed with Smile Train Support (Smile Train Annual Report )

They report helping 100,000 children a year, working with local doctors to carry out the surgeries and providing information to them on up-to-date techniques to improve the procedure. They also report having distributed software to more than 38,800 medical professionals, and run conferences and encourage methods of communication that keep these individuals up to date on their subject.

In 2010 their income (including contributions in kind) was some $162,296,235. They spent some $110 million on program services and education, and around $22.5 million on fundraising, claiming only $1,187,089 for management and general costs. There should be a little caveat here. (One of the two niggles that I have with this charity). The co-founder and President, Brian Mullaney, was compensated to the tune of $678,058 in 2009. And the books showed that the assets of the charity increased by $28.5 million, to $135 million. It claims to be one of the fastest growing charities in America, and apart from the President’s pay, the size and rate of growth of these assets is the second item that is a bit of a concern. The reason goes back to a remark that the President, Brian Mullaney, made in 2008.

Mullaney estimates that Smile Train is close to reaching a historic break-even point: it will perform more operations each year than the number of children born each year in developing countries with cleft deformities. This means Smile Train may be well on its way to putting itself out of business. “That,” Mullaney says, “would be a dream.”

Unfortunately before one reaches that laudable point, the charity will reach another, when it “runs out” of doctors to train and reaches the capacity of the system to handle patients in a given year. At that point the charity may take in more money than it can effectively spend.

That is not to say that the charity is yet at that point, it has been noted that there is still a significant problem in India, for example, where over a million children need treatment, with 32,000 new cases a year. But it may be running out of “room to grow.” It has also been criticized in that the cost of the surgeries is often higher than the $250 which is used in the advertising . If the number of operations per year, for example, is 100,000 and the program services (treatment and training) cost is $85 million, then the cost per surgery is perhaps $850, doing simple division.

And yet nevertheless this seems a very worthwhile activity to support, though maybe it is getting a little too successful at fund-raising, which might cause it to add other programs and thus dilute its effectiveness on the original task in the years to come.

And so, a couple of closing thoughts.

First I am not, in itself, against programs that send American physicians abroad to help with medical problems in disadvantaged countries. My optometrist, Bud Falkenhein, has won national recognition for his work in this field, where he annually has led a group of optometrists to different parts of the world to help with eye problems. But that is slightly different from bringing in teams of surgeons that do operations under time pressure and then leave before any development problems have been dealt with.

Second, I am still glad that I honored the Advocate’s request and made the donations to two charities that seem to be a cut above the general mix; it is merely that I thought that the funds that I sent would have been more productive than they will likely turn out to be. There is, after all, somewhat of a difference between a chicken and a water buffalo, and between one operation and two. (And yes - because my great grandfather was a village plowman, a position of respect in the Scottish villages a century ago - I am just a bit disappointed that I could not help another individual gain that "step up" with the donation that we made).

P.S. I also recognize that there are other charities who allow one to donate animals. For example Episcopal Relief and Development has a "Gift for Life" program, where for just a little more money I could donate a plow with the ox to pull it. Perhaps I will look into that in a little more detail, and perhaps add another comment on a charity that I have, in the past, looked favorably on, but whose website is not available tonight.

Water problems in Nepal

There is a growing tendency to assign the cause of weather events that badly impact different populations to climate change, and thereby to add additional “evils” to those who generate “greenhouse gases.” I noted this last week about the story of the Nile Delta and the causes of erosion and lack of fertility that farmers are now seeing. As I showed the events have nothing to do with climate change or AGW, despite the bits of the story that implied that they were.

The events don’t even have to have happened yet. This week Oxfam International were pointing to the change in climate threatening the livelihood of the people of Nepal.

Nepal will likely suffer more frequent droughts because of climate change, Oxfam International said in a report released in Kathmandu. River levels will decline due to the reduced rainfall and glacial retreat, making it harder to irrigate crops and provide water for livestock.

Now here is the problem that I have with that last sentence. When there is precipitation in the mountains, it is either retained in the mountains as ice and snow, or it goes into the rivers where it is available for irrigation. If glaciers grow then less of that precipitation is available for irrigation, if glaciers retreat, that means that they are melting and not only not capturing the precipitation but are also providing some of their stored water to be available for irrigation. This supply of more water is a resource critically needed in China as well as Nepal, and provides the great rivers that flow from the Himalayas and are relied on by millions of people.

The report itself is a integrated mix of things that might happen if the global temperature increases by 2 degC by 2050 (35% of the Himalayan glaciers are projected to disappear) and a recent winter drought that has left many farmers without adequate food supplies.

However this has been a poor year for the monsoon in India, and Kumar et al have shown that the failure of the monsoon correlates with El Nino events – something that we are now moving into.

Thus the actual events that are reported in the Oxfam report have a cause that is likely not due to global warming but to a predictable and regular other cause. However, by combining the effects of the drought and the poor weather, with the predicted events that might occur with a dramatic increase in global temperature, a confusing picture of contradictory predictions has been built. Monsoons, sadly, have failed before, and for the same reason.

It is understandable that folk seek to find a scapegoat when the weather is inhospitable, however, as with other countries, an additional part of the problem in Nepal arises from the increase in population, particularly in the Kathmandu Valley. To solve the problem the government has just laid the foundation stone for a 26.5 km long tunnel to bring 170 million liters of drinking water a day (MLD) into the valley. It is known as the Melamchi Drinking Water Project and is due to be completed in 2013. The work is being carried out by a Chinese contractor. The valley needs some 240 MLD and can supply only 90 MLD, for the 2 million inhabitants of the valley. Most of the rain (it gets about 1.5 m/year) comes in the monsoon season between June and August.

It has not met with universal approbation and does not help those living in the hills. However they have other problems since while the communities live on the tops of the hills, the water is in streams in the valleys and so women and children can spend up to 4 – 6 hours a day just carrying water. There has recently been an innovation – called the Large Fog Collector (LFC)

The Large Fog Collectors (LFC) are constructed using 4 x 8 meter sheets of polypropylene mesh, which when suspended on a ridgeline resembles a large volleyball net. Warm air from the Bay of Bengal moves inland during the monsoon, where it intercepts the varied topology of the Himalayan foothills. As the air moves up into valleys at higher altitudes, it mixes with cooler air and condenses, forming fog. As fog passes through the fog collectors, water droplets cling to the weave of the mesh, and filter down into a discharge system that stores the water in 20,000 liter ferro-cement tanks. Water quality testing found that all parameters meet WHO guidelines. . . . . . . . Here six large fog collectors produce an average of 1700 liters of water per day for the villages 75 inhabitants.

Although relatively cheap they do require both maintenance and frequent fog which they get in Nepal, Peru and Chile.

The glaciers in the Himalayas occupy some 193,000 sq miles and at present the melting and retreat of the glaciers, which has been been going on since the end of the Little Ice Age, has accelerated since 1970. It is the melting of the glaciers that provides the water for the rivers and people that they serve, and provide a supply of water in the seasons that the rains don’t fall. It will be interesting to see if the changing global climate conditions of this century have any impact on the melt rate.

The nations that are served are thus in a bit of a cleft stick, since during the Little Ice Age the glaciers grew, and thus supplied less water to their dependants than they do now, so the current melting does have some benefits, that should be recognized.

But if it continues too long then the water resource will be gone - depending on how the temperature actually continues to rise, if it does, this is going to lead to a difficult conumdrum, though likely over a longer time period than is currently being used as a discussion point.

On the other hand (h/t Marc Morano) when Asia gets hotter, then in the past the glaciers have started growing again.

A group of Himalayan glaciers grew six-fold during much hotter summers, when temperatures rose steeply by six degrees Celsius in Asia, baffling geologists.

P27. Pick Points

Half-a-dozen or so stories of interest:

Somewhere in Washington they are looking for incentives for us to buy a new car. The Germans have seen it work by providing 2,500 euros to everyone who replaces a car at least nine years old with a new one. The need for this can be seen by the continued decline in sales, even as industry incentives have risen to an average $2,902. Well maybe we should hold-off on a replacement until they decide ?

Having set some of the standards for automobiles that will likely soon impact the rest of the country, it is now California’s turn to go after energy inefficient appliances, such as TV’s, which can account for 10% of a home electricity bill. The Department of Energy is running a campaign to improve residential water heaters. Yet the amount set aside in the stimulus package is relatively quite small. Though that has not stopped some entrepreneurs. There are the standard steps that one can take to save energy but if the economy is to rebound, then the scale of increase that California has achieved needs to be applied, even perhaps in Italy.

One of the features of the Medieval Warming Period was the extensive and long-lasting droughts that hit Southern California. Trees grew where now lakes and rivers run, it was so dry. Now California is again facing severe drought. There are already campaigns to reduce water usage . With the snow pack only 61% of normal this could be the third year in a row where water runs short, and this is beginning to have serious consequences for agriculture . While the snow situation is a little better in Nevada, it too is facing problems. On the other hand Utah’s nine-year drought came to an end last June, and Arizona is seeing a moderate drought in Navajo County.

Following the Russia:Ukraine dispute over natural gas the relatively small volumes that could be sent around Ukraine through the North and South Stream pipelines is getting another look. In the South Gazprom is considering increasing capacity by 50% to 47 bcm. Coming the day after the meeting on the Nabucco pipeline, its major competitor, the response is quite quick. Germany points out that one can support both. But it may be Prime Minister Putin who makes the next move.

MidWestern Senators are urging a reconsideration of the FutureGen project. This plan to build a demonstration coal-fired power plant that would capture and sequester carbon dioxide was “restructured” by the last DOE Administration, and thus killed. This could not, perhaps have had anything to do with it being proposed for Illinois, where the junior Senator at the time had announced his support.

In order to help provide more electricity to Nepal, the price is to be raised and in this way load shedding can drop to 12 hours a day “soon” and to 6 hours a day by the end of February. There is s Singaporean there blogging about the problems.

For more stories see The Energy Bulletin or Drumbeat at The Oil Drum

P20. Pick Points

Half-a-dozen or so stories of interest.

So is the Russian:Ukrainian story over for another year, or ten? Certainly it has lost the press coverage, but there will remain caution until the gas finally arrives. But one part of the deal is that RosUkrEnergo will be cut out of the action. Gazprom is reported to have set 0700 on Tuesday to resume supplies However it is estimated to take another 36 hours before gas will make it to Western Europe. The domestic situation in Ukraine is a little more complicated, since the coal and steel plants (that heavily use Russian gas) are in the east of the country, which has been a strong Russian supporter. But the gas problem has alienated some of the region, even though it is leading to a potential increase in the use of coal, which is locally mined. (pdf). The mines also contain natural gas, and this can be recovered as a separate fuel. (pdf), and such work appears to be under way.(pdf)
Here is the beginning of my post.
The British – oops! – Scottish coal industry has started to move into profit, after having been in the red a year ago, Scottish coal mining has become profitable. This occurred as sales dropped from 3.1 million tons to 2.9 million, and is encouraging the firm to open new and some old sites, though all will be surface mines, or opencast. The market will now be able to use 4 million tons/year, and so the prospects for a new deep mine at Canonbie are looking up. (Small personal note – back over a hundred and twenty years ago my ancestor was blacksmith in that village. It is a beautiful setting).

Speaking of coal there is a strange story up in Alaska about the power plant and a utility company.

I had mentioned the other day that CNG prices had gone up in Pakistan, the result has been that out of 250 stations in Rawalpindi and Islamabad that sold the fuel, over 150 were not in the cities and some 400 were out in the region, and those who had CNG were only working limited hours . It freed taxi drivers to raise rates. But it also appears that there were differences in the rates in different cities, and though the lack of supply was blamed on low gas pressure price may have also played some part. The current situation seems to be getting worse.

Speaking of reviews of the situation Energy Shortage points to a broad review of the problems that Nepal are having with hydro-electric power generation.

Investors seem to be pulling back from wind power investments, just as the plug was pulled in Maine, so it appears that the large London Array project, some 341 turbines which would generate some 1,000 mW of electricity, and which Shell backed out of, is now being reconsidered by the Abu Dhabi State owned Masdar company, again because of questionable economics. Though the drop in steel prices might help. Apparently wind driven power generation is still costing three times that of a conventional gas-fueled station, though how long that will last is likely a Russian decision.

As usual there are more stories at the Energy Bulletin and Drumbeat at The Oil Drum.

P15. Pick Points

Half-a-dozen or so stories of interest.

Further to the post yesterday on Bulgaria and Slovakia’s options to find natural gas, one of the suggestions has been to see if Turkey could let them have some. Slovakia’s problems have also got worse, since a fire in a coal-fired plant has caused a partial shut-down. Russia has said that the problem with the Ukrainian codicil’s to the agreement have been resolved, and they are going to start pumping today , though it will take until late Wednesday for the gas to reach Western Europe. And there is still the matter of the 12 million cu m/day which now it transpires is claimed to be needed to power the pumps that drive the gas through Ukraine, and which Ukraine thinks Gazprom should provide. However, unless there is a prolonged cold spell, it is anticipated that gas prices may drop by as much as 40% this summer. It is suggested that part of the reason this is over so soon is that Gazprom needs the revenue to service its debt, and it wants to get the current good price, before it collapses. Current losses are estimated to be in the $127 - $141 million a day range. (Prices are thought likely to fall from the current $418 per tcm to $180 in the third quarter).

Uganda is facing more rationing of electricity (read load shedding and power outages) as they continue to have problems getting enough fuel for their power stations. Power is very limited, and so they are considering using geothermal energy to help out.

Power shortages in Nepal are now threatening the drinking water supplies. Volumes of water that can be pumped have been cut in half as the power outages limit how long the pumps can run. The company is trying to bring in diesel generators to help solve the problem in the short term. The local rickshaws are electric powered, and no longer can be charged because of the outages, which is causing outrage. So relying on electricity to power cars can also have problems.

Stanford has created a new energy center to look into such problems, starting with $100 million, the center is headed by a petroleum engineer, and funded by successful graduates. Meanwhile the Gulf states are also looking for good investments in green energy and will be hosting a World Future Energy Conference in Abu Dhabi, which will soon have a satellite campus of MIT.

We will need a lot of that research since there are a fair number of questions, already on what the new Aministration is going to be able to do to switch over to sustainable fuels. And the President of Exxon Mobil has expressed doubt, given that there are increasing questions on the ability of biofuels to meet targets, while there isn’t enough manufacturing capacity to build the wind turbines in the numbers needed. POET the “top” ethanol producer has just opened a plant to produce 20,000 gallons a year (that’s 1.3 barrels a day, folks) as a pilot scale demonstration of their first plant capable of producing at a commercial scale that will hopefully be on stream in 2011, given that the mandate is 16 billion gallons a year by 2022, we need that progress. The goal is for about the same amount of corn ethanol, but with today’s futures price being $4.26 and it costing between $0.80 and $1.20 per bushel to run the plant, there’s not a lot of profit in the 2.5 gallons per bushel the average plant produces, when it sells for $1.68 a gallon. However Pursuit Dynamics is working with Iroquois Bio-Energy on a new system that should come on line next month, and which should increase yield by 8-12%., and there is hope that they can increase yield to 3.3 gal/bushel. Not that this will help the Russian farmers who brought in a record harvest, and had to watch their prices fall.

For more energy related news visit the Energy Bulletin or Drumbeats at The Oil Drum.

Load Shedding, Blackouts or becoming more vulnerable

Load Shedding is one of those terms that has started popping up in more stories than it used to. Mainly they are stories that relate to distant, foreign parts, such as South Africa, and are thought to be avoidable events for more advanced countries. Load shedding occurs where demand for power from an electrical utility exceeds the amount of power that the utility has available. In order to avoid creating undue havoc (there are a lot of systems that can only operate when power is supplied within a very narrow envelope of voltage) the power company then selects part of the load (i.e. which unlucky customers) it will no longer supply. It then shuts off the power to that group (shedding the load) so that the rest of the customers can continue to have power. It might be considered as a localized blackout, (as is happening in Western Ireland) except that if it is handled correctly it might have much less of an impact

I teach a class that involves, among other things, the use of power in mines. I was discussing how, in looking at the way in which power is used in those mines, prudent managers would designate the power going to different parts of the operation as vital, sheddable and avoidable. Some things, for example the large fans that keep air circulating through an underground mine, are vital to its operation. Some things, such as the operation of the pumps that drain the water from areas of the mine prone to flooding, can be rescheduled, in many cases, to off-peak periods, and some power use – such as running a conveyor when there is no production taking place, or keeping the lights on at the surface during daylight, can be eliminated. So I was talking about this, and three of the folk in the class commented that they had worked in mines in the United States, during the summer, and the mine had been asked to shed some load by the utility.


The most dramatic visible load shedding was, perhaps, the collapse of the power distribution network in Southern Africa, about this time last year. Essentially the power company ESKOM, had failed to keep up with demand, by properly maintaining the power stations and supplies, and planning ahead to match available production with the increasing demand that they were facing. The problem was not, however, limited to South Africa alone.

In the northern part of South Africa around Johannesburg, there are a number of coal mines and power plants. Surplus power could be sold into the neighboring countries to the North, so that they did not need to build their own plants, or start to develop their own deposits of coal. One such place was Botswana, just across the border, which had, at the time, one power plant, fed with coal from one mine, and with that mine having one mining machine to produce the needed coal.

Botswana is not yet a fully developed country. Only 35% of the population has access to electricity and until January 2008, they had assumed that their shortfall in domestically generated power would be made up by imports from South Africa. Their economy was booming, and their increased demand for power was being driven more by industrial growth than by rural electrification. And then in January, South Africa discovered that they no longer had enough power, and started load shedding. Given that they didn’t bother to inform the average person in Botswana before they did, a little disruption ensued. (http://allafrica.com/stories/200801280174.html).

I was down in Botswana a little later in the year (February) and this was the story that I posted to The Oil Drum at that time.

“I had mentioned earlier the problems that that country suddenly encountered when the source for 75% of its electric power – Eskom of South Africa – started to use it as a load-sheddable part of its distribution chain. It has since given Botswana the amounts that it can expect over the next four years. From a supply of 410 MW in 2007; it will get 350 MW in 2008; 250 MW in 2009; and 150 MW in 2010 through 2012. While the country has in-house generation, it decided some time ago that it was less costly to import power than to increase internal supply. Now it will take some time to create that internal power, from coal, of which the country has a more than adequate supply.

The expansion of the current plant, already in process, will not occur until 2010, and was planned to only add 120 MW, less by then, than the lost imports. And current growth in demand has been at 5.6% per annum. It does not help that:

It has also emerged that at the beginning of this year, the desperate BPC signed a no guarantees contract that allows Eskom to cut power supplies to Botswana within as little as ten minutes notice.

Flying into Gaborone, the capital, from Johannesburg, after reading the articles that had lead to the earlier pieces, I had expected to see that there would be some impact on behavior. But, crossing the veldt, there were lace points of light that reached out as long as I could see the ground. Once landed the streets were lit, and gas stations were running normally (at about $1 a liter). Going into meetings the following morning, it seemed to have been, at that scale, an irritant. We continued to meet, and then the lights went out, and the air conditioner shut off.

There were a couple of remarks, and we continued with the meeting (which wasn't about this), and about fifteen minutes later power came back on. There is no sense, from those I talked to, as to when each outage will occur, nor how long it will last. And what is an inconvenience in a discussion, becomes much worse, for a business. Longer outages have led to spoiled meat at restaurants and it is perhaps not surprising that virtually all the meals we had were served as buffets.

The problem was foreseen, and, as with the current world oil situation, there were voices that expressed concern. But while demand continued to grow, supply did not. Maintenance was not adequate, and there has been a continuing economic crisis in neighboring Zimbabwe which has led to their power stations shutting down, and power distribution collapsing.

The nation was sitting at the start of what looks to be a very promising future. As commodity prices rise it has the world’s second largest diamond mine as well as other, increasingly valuable minerals. The second largest industry is tourism, with beef production running third (it is the size of Texas, but has perhaps a sixth the size of that herd). Plans were well underway to increase electrification of villages, which had been only at around 12% toward universal access to power by 2016. Unfortunately, due in part to lack of training, use of solar power has not been as successful as had been hoped. And now, not only is there no new power to meet these future needs, there is not enough even for today.

So the Power Company has been scrambling to find answers wherever they can. Obviously there are some conservation measures, which include

replacement of incandescent lamps, which consume a lot of power. The director of transmission at BPC, Edward Rugoyi said the project is aimed at reducing power consumption to 30 MW by June this year.

Implementation will cost the corporation at least P20 million. Another initiative BPC will look at is load shifting, where the organisation will control domestic water heating by switching off water geysers during the peak period by using controls installed in their systems. Rugoyi said the exercise will cost P60 million and it is planned for May 2009.

(The currency is the Pula, at about 6 to the dollar. They are coming out of summer, so air conditioning will not be an immediate burden, though it can get cool in the winter, that is still some months away.


Morupule Power Plant

For the longer term, the plan is to increase power from the Morupule Power Plant, to a new level of 300 MW, helped by the Chinese , tenders have been accepted to expand the Morupule plant to 300 MW by 2010, with incentives for fast-tracking. In the more immediate short term, Botswana has agreed to work with Zimbabwe in restoring and operating the currently dysfunctional power station at Bulawayo in Zimbabwe, with countries sharing 50:50 in the power produced from the coal that Botswana will supply. This will require new transmission lines.


New Power Transmission Lines near the Zimbabwean border in Botswana

In short – depending on how successful the arrangement with Zimbabwe turns out to be, Botwsana may have less than a year of discomfort, and, if the Chinese can perform to schedule, no more than a couple before becoming sufficiently independent of outside power supply that it can return to its planned progress forward. Much of that progress will likely build on the growth of the local mining industry, which is fairly energy dependent (as the South Africans are now well aware). Thus the plan is to continue to increase the size of the Moruplule plant with another 300 MW, once the first phase is completed.

Following the visit, and that story, I was pointed to a Web site – Energy Shortage that illustrates the places around the world where energy shortages are currently occurring. Among the countries that are listed for today (January 8,2009) are:

Argentina; India; Indonesia; Ireland; Nepal, and South Africa.

Note Ireland, it is a reminder, as power stations have started cancelling plans for expansion in the United States, of what might be coming to our light switch, if the correct planning is not put in place, now!