In the vast wilderness of southern Zambia, something remarkable is going on. Under development and soon to be commissioned is Zambia’s first geothermal project. Despite the misgivings from some of the world’s leaders in geothermal, the team at Kalahari GeoEnergy Ltd are set to prove that economically viable geothermal resources do exist beyond the Rift Valley of East Africa.
I was very fortunate to join Kalahari GeoEnergy on site in Zambia in mid-March, where the team are demonstrating ways community focused geothermal should be developed. The project is in an area of complex land use protocols and plays host to 110,000 cattle, farmers, and their communities. From the off, the project has worked very closely with the communities to gain trust and mutual respect, understanding the social etiquette and their needs. From this the Kalahari team have focused in on diary-related tri-generation applications that will directly and positively impact the local communities and wider region.
The demonstration phase of the project will focus on tri-generation for milk processing. There will be milk collection points with cool storage generated by using geothermal heat to run absorption chillers. Geothermal heat will also be used for pasteurisation, and the electricity required will be generated through binary ORC technologies. There are on-going challenges over milk quality in Zambia, but this system will encourage the cattle farmers to take ownership of producing a good quality product.
A further application is associated with cattle feed. At the moment, the feed is transported 5 hours by road from Lusaka at a very high cost. Kalahari GeoEnergy has worked with local agriculture farmers to encourage them to grow sunflowers. The country is currently experiencing a severe drought and maize, while politically driven and will continue to be harvested alongside the sunflowers, is not drought resilient, unlike the sunflower. Sunflowers are being grown across an area of 38 hectares, the oil will be extracted and provided to the farmers for use in food preparation and for sale, while the husks will be used to mix cattle feed. Geothermal heat and power will contribute to these processes. The production of cattle feed on their doorstep brings down the price of the feed and reduces the carbon footprint by cutting out long and heavy transport.
Additional applications that will benefit the region are being explored and will be incorporated into future phase development which is likely to include milk powder. All the while, the surface infrastructure blends with the surrounding environment either through burying what can be buried, or painting what cannot be buried to match the surroundings.
This project will not only contribute to decarbonisation of power, heating, and cooling, it will also bring food security, financial security, employment, skills, empowerment, and resilience to the area. With later applications and initiatives exploring tourism, there is also a path toward re-establishing the contiguous national park and biodiversity gain.
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