Photo by Julien Harneis
Rwanda is harnessing the natural gas in one of three known “exploding lakes” to generate electricity in a nation where just 1 in 14 houses has access to power. The technology will boost the African nation’s economy while also mitigating the danger of lake overturn, in which huge clouds of carbon dioxide are released, suffocating everyone in their midst.
Let’s backtrack: an exploding lake? Lake Kivu, which lies on the border of the Democratic Republic of Congo, is literally carbonated with pockets of carbon dioxide and methane that seep up from the volcanic Earth underneath. The ever-increasing amounts of gas in the water, combined with nearby volcanic activity, make the possibility of overturn dangerously high.
So the Rwandans have begun sucking up Kivu’s waters and filtering out the methane to use it for power, before dumping the water and CO2 back. The project is already producing 4 percent of the nation’s electricity and is drawing investment. But, good reader, is it green? Reducing the gas concentrations in the lake will make it and its populous environs safer for people, but natural gas is hardly a green source of power. And, according to the Guardian, there hasn’t been sufficient study of the environmental effects of dumping the filtered water and carbon dioxide back into the lake.
I’m no expert, but this undertaking seems to beg for attempts to sequester the carbon dioxide. After all, the biggest danger posed by that emergent technology is leaks, and Rwanda is already facing those.