Lake Kivu Methane Solutions

We then teamed with a South African engineering and construction company, completing a feasibility study. We evaluated the existing concept against an alternative we proposed. We then pilot-tested it at 1/25th scale in 2004, shipping a container load of material to build a low-budget, scaled-down version of our design. The new concept proved more viable and capable of expanded gas production and separation, and worth sourcing funding for a 20x scale-up to generate 5 MW of power. Funding for the $25 M full-scale demo facility was unaffordable for both the government and private investors. Even Heineken Breweries, a co-investor and the primary user of the gas to date, could not raise the funds from their board.

In 2007, the World Bank and EU arranged a February 2007 technical update and donor conference in Gisenyi, Rwanda, which we attended. I was appointed to a World Bank-assembled team of lake experts, mainly academics from Europe. I presented novel solutions for gas extraction, based on our work to date. Numerous lake scientists presented the complexity of the stratified lake and the potential dangers of its eruption, caused by gas accumulation and lava inflows, or rifting of the lake floor. A six-person pro-bono Expert Group was appointed, to be led by a senior World Bank environmentalist. He has since retired in Vancouver. The Expert Group was asked to re-assess and confirm the rules for gas production issued in 1986, the “Reglements Socigaz”, and whether they were valid to maintain lake safety. The Rwandan Government put forward its best expertise, led by its Minister of Energy Dr Albert Butare.

The Gisenyi conference had heard me raise concerns about how valid the assumption was that all the deeper, gas-rich water could be siphoned out, degassed, and returned to the shallows. This was flawed thinking, proven by mass balances and detailed 2D and 3D modeling alternate configurations of the impact of inflows and outflows from the lake to the extraction facility. The “legacy” process dating from 1965 would lead to the total mixing of the density layers, destroying the effective safety measure that could keep gigatons of gas safely in place.

The viability of two large lakeside cities was also seriously impacted by the legacy design’s likely disruption of the lake. Both had grown to ten times the population from the pre-civil war years. Growth followed desperate rural villagers sheltering within the zone protected by 15,000 UN soldiers. Somehow, life in these DRC cities was and remains even more bleak than in Rwanda. By then, 3 million people in rural areas had perished in 30 years of civil conflict in the DRC.

By January 2010, The Management Prescriptions for Lake Kivu Development (MPs) were issued, in French and English versions. I presented them to both countries, encouraging them to vote them into law as the rules of use for the lake to control resource usage and extraction methods. In 2010, both countries codified the MPs as the governing bilateral regulation. Legacy methodologies for gas extraction deploy autosiphons to lift deep water toward the surface. At the surface, gas naturally bubbles out of the solution. In its crudest form, as demonstrated in the 1965 lakeside facility erected by Union Chimique de Belge at Cap Rubone, “swamp gas” was produced as a boiler fuel for a local Heineken brewery. However, if done at scale, it would become seriously problematic. Evidence of this showed up in a demo facility built in 2008 by an Israeli-Scottish consortium, as underwater monitoring showed emission plumes misbehaving.

The understanding embedded in the MPs is that developing gas resources in Lake Kivu is like Yin & Yang in character. Treated properly, Kivu remains stable and will yield energy & wealth. However, abusing it endangers humanity and the global climate. Therefore, how extraction is performed matters: A correct and compliant design protects & can preserve the lake for millennia. But abusing it precipitates a catastrophic eruption, emitting a dense, 400-foot-deep toxic gas cloud, that will endanger millions of lakeside residents. The choice of how to proceed remains stark and clear.

The MPs called for developers to produce vast quantities of renewable natural gas and CO2 gas safely and efficiently from Lake Kivu. The purpose is to degas the lake safely, over 50 years or longer, and to be able to fully extract the bulk of gas in situ to reverse the danger of a limnic eruption. As a startup, we have the standout solution to the problem in hand, and are at a state of readiness to be the quickest path to resolving the threat, fulfilling the needs and doing it with standout economics, especially as we can sell emissions-reduction carbon credits to subsidize cheaper clean energy to the 20-million strong regional population.

But politics and expedience inevitably confound the best intentions. Since 2010, two US-originated developers acquired licenses to build and operate gas-to-power facilities, following respectively a 2008 US Presidential visit to Kigali with one, and a 2014 White House visit with another. Both used pressure to allow them to “waive the rules” by pressuring the government with legal threats and suits. Both now operate a 25 MW and a 15 MW intermediate-scale facility, where monitoring has shown highly concerning disturbances of the lake’s crucial density layering. Both need to be shut down and reconfigured to comply with the MPs.

The safety status of the lake is being further compromised, exacerbating a major humanitarian and climate threat. That needs reversing. A better alternative is available, and proven, and needs to take precedence. Academic papers have been published warning of the increased danger to the lake and its 5 million-strong lakeside population. As both an expert observer and environmental justice activist on the problem, we need to fundraise for the solution’s construction of a demo-stage facility (TRL7-8) and prove that it meets the proof-of-performance criteria to build out at scale and solve the serious threats of Lake Kivu.

More than that, the political, social, and humanitarian threats require a campaign-style level of public relations, social justice, and engagement, well beyond the reach and capability of an underfunded start-up. We intend to deliver investment-grade returns to our investors but also commit to returning significant value and cheaper energy to countries’ populations whose leading natural assets we plan to harvest for them. We need to formulate a much broader-based solution than would normally be called for from a startup. This is a huge mission that needs a wide-ranging plan and more support. Up to five million lives are at risk of being extinguished in a day, and the limnic eruption incident will release as much GHG emissions in a day as the USA or China releases annually. We can fix that, but need help to deliver the full scope of needs.