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UCT RESEARCH REPORT 2012
The energy potential of waste biomass in Africa and South
Africa has repeatedly been estimated to be sizeable.
Theoretically, the project aims to better understand, and
then help activate, the potential of a technology-specific
innovation system to convert the identified potentials
Towards a Technology-specific Innovation System for
Harnessing Waste-based Bioenergy
Research Project
into sustainability gains, through processes of societal
learning.
Much of the required technology exists in Asia
and in Europe, but innovation is still required to
make these technologies work in the South African
context. Researchers at UCT are inspired by the recent
spontaneous, bottom-up emergence of a technology-
specific innovation system for biogas in Germany and
are beginning to investigate the similar emergence of
such an innovation system in South Africa.
The project is based at the University of Cape Town,
in the Faculty of Engineering & the Built Environment,
contributing to its “social innovation” ambitions, but
tying into UCT’s African Climate and Development
Initiative. Since a key feature of biogas technology is
its cross-cutting nature covering matters of sanitation,
solid-waste management, energy supply and nutrient
cycling, there are collaborations and interactions with
colleagues in the Department of Civil Engineering,
the Energy Research Centre and the African Centre
for Cities. However, as the potential waste biomass
is occurring in both urban and rural areas, as are
South Africa’s sustainable development challenges,
the project is run in partnership with colleagues at the
University of Venda who already have developed some
expertise in biogas technology in rural settings.
Key features of the project work plan include describing
the present state of the biogas innovation system and
in so doing to identify mechanisms that induce or block
adoption of the technology. The project also aims to
stimulate the direction of the biogas innovation system
by the planning, construction and operation of four
demonstration facilities, designed to give effect to
key functions of the university in a technology-specific
innovation system. These demonstration facilities are
harnessed in a targeted work plan to initiate learning
of technologies and to track the uses to which this
learning is put.
The project is funded by the National Research
Foundation’s Global Change, Society and Sustainability
Research Programme, 2012–2014.
This project aims to unlock the energy and greenhouse-gas mitigation potential of waste biomass in South Africa, drawing
on UCT’s 20-year experience of researching clean technologies, waste minimisation and industrial ecology, and on
supporting existing expertise of the University of Venda to realise key objectives.