OK, folks, I know this platform is for agricultural economics related notes, but an exception once in a while won’t hurt. Last night I met up with an old schoolmate, Nikkie Korsten, who is in town for a conference.

While the electricity increases for the next three years are expected to negatively affect the agricultural industry, farmers have the capacity to run renewable energy projects on their farms to not only reduce their costs, but support the national grid. Eskom has announced tariff increases of 9.41%, 8.1% and 5.2% for the next three financial years.

Rapidly falling renewable-energy costs, together with emerging opportunities to electrify other energy end-uses such as transportation and heating, are continuing to reduce the investment premium associated with placing the world on a more climate-friendly path, a new international report highlights.

A nighttime arrival at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport flies you over the bright pink glow of vegetable production greenhouses. Growing crops under artificial light is gaining momentum, particularly in regions where produce prices can be high during seasons when sunlight is sparse.

This is article that was written by Johan Boshoff-  You can contact him directly to obtain the full report.

Connected fields, autonomous and electric agricultural machines and advanced data analysis systems will contribute to more sustainable and profitable agriculture.

Energy storage is becoming a critical question when it comes to renewable energy. Swiss startup, Energy Vault, has significant and concrete plans to tackle the problem. 

In coming decades as we transition to renewable energy in response to a climate change, Australia's excellent wind and solar resources will increasingly provide landowners with a bonanza of renewable energy opportunities, according to Professor Ken Baldwin when he was addressing the National Renewables in Agriculture conference and expo in Wagga Wagga.

South Africa’s energy crisis has many dimensions, from political and economic to technical and environmental. Recently, the country’s power utility, Eskom, has been generating only about 60% of its capacity and has had to restrict usage to prevent a regional blackout.

Africa is a vast and diverse continent with great untapped economic potential, yet extreme poverty continues to blight the lives of hundreds of millions of people. As many as 600 million Africans still lack access to electricity, according to the World Bank. That is more than the entire population of Europe.

The race to a renewable energy future relies heavily on solar power, with the International Energy Agency calling it “the new king of electricity” in last month’s World Energy Outlook 2020 report.

Zimbabwe is one of the African countries that hopes renewable energy technologies will help to address their energy problems. About 42% of Zimbabwe’s households are connected to the electricity grid.

The year 2020 was when the world stopped — and along with it, the industries that supported our previously unceasing motions stopped too as a result of largescale lockdowns and a prolonged halt to international travel.

Dié wondermiddel wat energie en fokus waarborg, is iets waaraan die meeste van ons gretig sluk, ondanks negatiewe berigte dat sommige van die byvoegings daarin dalk kan skade doen.

Earlier this month envoys from several rich countries held talks in South Africa to discuss a deal they want struck in time for the UN climate change conference (COP26) that opens in Glasgow at the end of the month.

In the run-up to the United Nations Climate Change Conference — COP26 — co-hosted by the British and Italian governments in Glasgow, Scotland, next month, many large economies faced severe energy shortages that threatened both their energy supply and food security.

South Africa’s department of mineral resources and energy recently announced its choice of companies to build and operate a new “batch” of renewable energy projects.

For some time, the Earth’s natural resources have been depleted faster than they can be replaced. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has set a 2030 deadline to reduce heat-trapping emissions by half to avoid climate change that is both irreversible and destructive.

The number of countries announcing pledges to achieve net-zero emissions over the coming decades continues to grow.

The need for a rapid transition to clean energy is enabling new developments in the renewable sector.