Cape Town signed a MoU with the Italian government to provide a new clean development mechanism (CDM) office in the Western Cape. The office will work with one of the largest CDM projects in the public transportation sector – using buses from the Beijing Olympics – valued at nearly at €60 million.
“We have signed a memorandum-of-understanding with the Italian government for the provision of buses. But we are busy working out our carbon baseline now, and we estimate that the value is €60-million, for which we could get about 100 or 150 buses,” explained Western Cape Department of environmental affairs director Mark Gordon.
Gordon said that the Western Cape has set broad targets of 15% renewable energy generation by 2014, off the current base of about 5 000 MW. The province also wanted to achieve 10% energy efficiency against the baseline by 2014, as well as realize a 10% reduction in carbon emissions.
“We have also commissioned a grid study with the German government to look at wind development projects, primarily on the West Coast, and to look at coding issues and grid accessibility and grid study. So the study covers all of that quite closely with Eskom,” Gordon explained.