The Wall Street Journal blogger Keith Johnson reports that one of Rwanda's "killer lakes" is, at long last, being viewed as a viable resource for powering the surrounding area, or even for export-scale power production. Lake Kivu is a large lake (480 meters deep) that lies on the border between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. It sits on the locus of tremendous geological activity and as a result, methane gas collects in the lake water, forming a ticking time bomb. If the lake water on the bottom becomes heated from the underlying volcanic action, the methane will bubble up with a high chance of explosion. The accompanying carbon dioxide release would be of enough magnitude to kill many of the lake's inhabitants, as happened in the 80s along Africa's other two exploding lakes, Cameroon's Lake Nyos and Monoun.
After decades of distress, Rwandan officials are finally getting the chance to kill two massive birds with one stone by installing a power plant along the lakeshore that will siphon methane from the lake and get more Rwandans on the grid. American company Contour Global is throwing 200 million dollars at the project with hopes to add Lake Kivu to its long list of green energy success stories, ranging from turkey waste in Minnesota to hydroelectricity in Brazil.
Naturally, seeing this flourish would be a serious environmental benchmark, but I hope that I'm just being a legalese-happy American raised on an unhealthy diet of land-use issues when I worry about the political consequences of success. With volatile methane gasses turning safely into dollar signs, will a lake that sits between two war-torn nations see eruptions anyway as the gas becomes profitable?
The Wall Street Journal blogger Keith Johnson reports that one of Rwanda's "killer lakes" is, at long last, being viewed as a viable resource for powering the surrounding area, or even for export-scale power production. Lake Kivu is a large lake (480 meters deep) that lies on the border between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. It sits on the locus of tremendous geological activity and as a result, methane gas collects in the lake water, forming a ticking time bomb. If the lake water on the bottom becomes heated from the underlying volcanic action, the methane will bubble up with a high chance of explosion. The accompanying carbon dioxide release would be of enough magnitude to kill many of the lake's inhabitants, as happened in the 80s along Africa's other two exploding lakes, Cameroon's Lake Nyos and Monoun.
After decades of distress, Rwandan officials are finally getting the chance to kill two massive birds with one stone by installing a power plant along the lakeshore that will siphon methane from the lake and get more Rwandans on the grid. American company Contour Global is throwing 200 million dollars at the project with hopes to add Lake Kivu to its long list of green energy success stories, ranging from turkey waste in Minnesota to hydroelectricity in Brazil.
Naturally, seeing this flourish would be a serious environmental benchmark, but I hope that I'm just being a legalese-happy American raised on an unhealthy diet of land-use issues when I worry about the political consequences of success. With volatile methane gasses turning safely into dollar signs, will a lake that sits between two war-torn nations see eruptions anyway as the gas becomes profitable?