Brookland residents ask for underground utility lines
About a 100 residents marched along the area's main strip on 12th Street recently, demanding the city divert $10.5 million allocated for a streetscape improvement project toward burying utility lines.
Residents say trees in the area are cut in odd ways to make room for the aboveground wires. They say the disfigured trees are eyesores and fail to provide shade, creating a lack of vibrancy.
Pepco officials say they must prune trees to power homes and businesses. They say converting to underground cables can cost up to $8 million a mile, or six to 10 times the cost of aboveground wiring.
The District Department of Transportation says the money already budgeted for the improvement project will upgrade sidewalks, curbs and other infrastructure — but not bury electrical wires.
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Africa must quadruple power investment to supply electricity for all, IEA says
JOHANNESBURG - African countries will need to quadruple their rate of investment in their power sectors for the next two decades to bring reliable electricity to all Africans, an International Energy Agency (IEA) study published on Friday said.
If African countries continue on their policy trajectories, 530 million Africans will still lack electricity in 2030, the IEA report said. It said bringing reliable electricity to all Africans would require annual investment of around $120 billion.
“We’re talking about 2.5% of GDP that should go into the power sector,” Laura Cozzi, the IEA’s Chief Energy Modeller, told journalists ahead of the report’s launch.…
