Western Cape Sets Targets for Renewables - about 1 month ago

SA, and the Western Cape in particular, took positive steps last week in the direction of using more renewable energy sources, writes Legalbrief.

Western Cape Premier Helen Zille officially released the Western Cape provincial government’s strategic plan on environmental sustainability and resource-use efficiency in Cape Town last week. The target is to generate 15% of the province’s electricity from renewable energy sources by 2014. An Engineering News report notes that the overall aim of the plan was to ensure that sustainability and resource-use efficiency were integrated into the activities of all provincial departments. Zille told journalists that the environment was the ‘goose that laid the golden egg’ for the Western Cape and it was, thus, essential to ensure that a road map was in place to ensure improved environmental sustainability across the province.
Full Engineering News report

Staying with renewables, Zille says that the development of a renewable industry in the province is being blocked by the national government’s energy policy and legislation that gives Eskom an entrenched monopoly on energy generation. A Cape Argus report states that she lashed out at the ANC’s ‘huge’ financial stake in the new multibillion-rand Medupi conventional coal-fired power station through its investment arm’s shareholding in contractor Hitachi Africa, describing it as ‘corruption’ and saying it was this type of self-interest on the part of the ruling party that was blocking green energy plans. ‘National (energy) policy and national legislation bumps right head-on with our vision … the huge financial stake of the ANC in Medupi makes it less likely that we are able to put our alternative (green energy plans) on the table,’ Zille said. She said she planned to make ‘the fullest use’ of an upcoming Cabinet lekgotla to press this argument.
Full Cape Argus report (subscription needed)

The pebble bed modular reactor (PBMR) technology is unlikely to solve SA’s energy shortage in a cost-effective way, according to an Institute of Security Studies paper on the project, says Business Day. Environmental policy researcher David Fig said the PBMR technology would provide ‘a small amount of expensive’ electricity. The commercial reactors were designed to produce 165MW each. Since the establishment of the PBMR company in 1999, the government has spent more than R8.5bn on the project. ‘Given the immense cost, the minimal power dividend and the opportunity cost of foregoing smart development of clean energy resources, why did SA continue to sink huge resources into the PBMR project until recently?’ asked Fig. The PBMR project should be shelved ‘openly and honestly’, he said, to end the days of special pleading by a small technocratic elite and to take responsibility for embracing carbon-free sources of electricity more vigorously.
Full Business Day report
Study

And, staying with energy issues, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed last week opening the way for the establishment of the so-called SA Regional Energy Efficiency Centre, which is expected to begin operations within 24 months, notes an Engineering News report. Once developed, the centre will offer research and information, as well as energy-efficiency product validation for builders, designers, architects, utilities, governments and manufacturers. The MoU was concluded between the SA National Energy Research Institute, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and the Association of Architectural Aluminium Manufacturers of SA.
Full Engineering News report

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