To some entrepreneurs waste, from sewage to manure to rotting food, has the aroma of money, writes Charlotte Mathews IT SMELLS like a piggery or an abattoir to you and me, but to some entrepreneurs it has the aroma of money.Waste, ranging from sewage and manure to rotting food, is used as a source of energy to a larger degree in Europe and Asia than in SA. Though biogas and biofuels are renewable energy sources, their business case took off only once government had adopted a policy of diversifying SA’s energy mix beyond fossil fuels.Biogas upgraded to biomethane is the same as natural gas, and can be either piped directly to a customer to drive industrial processes or compressed for sale in cylinders in the same way as liquid petroleum gas (LPG). Biomass can also be turned into bioethanol, biodiesel and bio jet fuel for use in the transport sector, and this is already happening on a small scale in SA.David Sonnenberg, the founder of Uhuru Energy, says the size of Europe’s biogas pla...
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