Tea with Sugar, Make Them Both Green, Please!
Chances are the next time you are served tea with sugar, it probably may interest you to know that both commodities passed through green and sustainable processes to reach your breakfast table.
And what’s more - small holder farmers in east Africa who worked hard to put a more environmentally friendly cup of tea in front of you not only reaped a bumper harvest from their labor, they also got to sell excess electricity generated to local grid operators.
The green funding mechanism, Global Environment Facility or GEF and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) are collaborating to implement small-scale hydropower projects and cogeneration power projects in several East African states in two initiatives.
The projects are meant to reduce the tea industry’s energy costs, enhance global competitiveness of the region’s tea industry. It hopes to increase the share of global tea revenues, flowing to the region’s tea farming community as well as provide opportunities for extending clean electricity to rural communities.
An independent financial organization, the GEF provides grants to developing countries for projects that benefit the global environment and promote sustainable livelihoods in local communities. The projects, worth around $100 million, are also being executed by the East African Tea Trade Association or EATTA and the Energy, Environment and Development Network for Africa (AFREPREN/FWD).
In the first initiative dubbed, Greening the Tea industry in Eastern and Southern Africa it is expected that over 8 million people including tea farmers, workers and their dependents will directly or indirectly benefit in 4 years. The Cogeneration for Africa will build on the success of cogeneration in Mauritius, which currently meets close to 40% of the country’s electricity needs.
Cogeneration for Africa seeks to significantly scale up the use of efficient cogeneration systems initially in seven Eastern and Southern African countries namely, Kenya, Ethiopia, Malawi, Sudan, Uganda, Tanzania and Swaziland.
Initially, the two initiatives will deliver 10 MW of hydropower to the tea industry, as well as 60 MW of cogeneration power within six years, from burning sugar by-products. UNEP forecasts that the cogeneration projects could add 200 MW of green electricity to the participating countries’ power grids.
Both initiatives are expected to stimulate small hydro capacity in the region as well as set the stage for the development of an indigenous and vibrant small hydro design, manufacturing, operation, maintenance and investment industry in the Eastern and Southern African region.
“These two new UNEP-led projects showcase the multiple benefits sustainable development can have for rural areas, offering social, economic and environmental benefits that help locally and globally, ” GEF chairperson and CEO Monique Barbut said.
The first initiative plans to provide support to small scale hydro power development and investment promotion which will include appropriately targeted capacity-building, technology transfer and financial incentives. The second initiative is designed to promote wider use of efficient cogeneration options in Africa and eventually stimulate over US$ 300 million of cogeneration investment in the region.
For small holder farmers, such as those growing sugar cane, the sale of electricity to the national grid by the sugar factory can also provide an additional source of revenue. By adopting efficient cogeneration technology, agro-industries such as sugar factories as well as forest industries can minimize the risks associated with declining commodity prices by selling surplus electricity to the national grid thus realizing a lucrative and, often, more stable revenue stream.
Your tea packaging may not be labeled Green Processed like in Organic or Fair Trade products, but it surely will add to the sweet taste of “tea with sugar”.
Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, says: “Tea is known to be good for you, now it is also getting better for the environment”.
Resources and further reading: UN Environment Programme, Global Environment Facility, East African Tea Trade Association, UNEP/ GEF Greening Tea Project, UNEP/ Cogeneration for Africa Project
Photo Credit: Martin Benjamin via Wikimedia Commons
EATTA might benefit from plugging in some numbers at http://www.openeco.org so they can calculated just how much energy they’re currently using for production vs what they would save by ‘going green’ and sustainable.