Rwanda - power to the people
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It’s a Friday afternoon on the Rwandan side of Lake Kivu, and in what was
once a quiet cove, a daring venture is taking shape.
Floating just offshore, like a giant mechanical swan, is a nearly completed gas extraction platform: 3,000 tons of concrete and stainless steel that will soon begin capturing a resource not found at this scale in any other lake in the world. Dissolved within Kivu, which straddles the border of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), are approximately 60 billion cubic meters of methane and 300 billion cubic meters of carbon dioxide. The gases, which come from nearby volcanic activity and bacteria decomposing organic material in the lake, represent both danger and economic potential.
Excerpt from:Lake Kivu’s Great Gas Gamble
MIT Technology Review
Words by Jonathan W. Rosen &
photographs by Jason Florio