Several companies have cashed in on the climate change conference in Durban to promote power-generating gadgets friendly to the environment.<\/p>\n
They had their hands full on Monday as people attending the two-week long 17th Conference of Parties (Cop17) enquired how the gadgets worked.<\/p>\n
Massive exhibition tents have been erected just a stone’s throw away from Durban’s Inkosi Albert Luthuli International Convention Centre where thousands of Cop17 delegates are discussing how to reduce emissions which cause climate change.<\/p>\n
“I amazed to see the number of environmentally-friendly equipment. This shows that we can do more to save the environment from the effects of climate change,” said delegate Lucas Langa.<\/p>\n
Heavy equipment on exhibition included the Renault<\/a>–Nissan<\/a> Alliance electric cars, called “Leaf”, which were available for environmental activists to test drive. The cars are powered by renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power.<\/p>\n Leaf<\/a> product manager Ross Garvie<\/a> said Nissan had sold more than 20,000 of them on three continents.<\/p>\n “We need to have infrastructure before it is launched in South Africa. We are expecting government incentives such as lower import duties before we introduce it in South Africa,” he said.<\/p>\n Instead of having petrol tanks, the cars have batteries charged by electricity. They can go as fast as 145 kilometres an hour and can travel 170 kilometres after charging.<\/p>\n The world’s only electric Porsche<\/a>, the 997 Carrera with a top speed of 220km\/h, also caught people’s eyes. It has a Siemens<\/a> AG electric motor.<\/p>\n Unlike the Renault-Nissan Alliance electric cars, the Porsche was not available for test driving.<\/p>\n Another exciting environment-friendly device was the fax and printer that operates independently of the electricity grid. The producers say it can help many sub-Saharan African schools which have no power.<\/p>\n In South Africa alone, more than 3000 schools have no access to electricity. This means that they are unable to print or receive faxes.<\/p>\n The Risola System uses soya-based ink and it is capable of printing 90 pages per hour.<\/p>\n “We believe this technology will help rural schools. The department of education saw it and they are very interested,” said Risola System spokeswoman, Sonia Anderson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Several companies have cashed in on the climate change conference in Durban to promote power-generating gadgets<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":33944,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[36,6989],"class_list":["post-38951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gadgets","tag-active","tag-cop17"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38951"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38951"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38953,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38951\/revisions\/38953"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}