Wezi Tjaronda
18 September 2006
Windhoek — The government is working on measures that will compel public institutions and parastatals to use solar water heaters.
The Ministry of Mines and Energy has made progress in formulating a policy that will ensure that all institutions heat their water with solar energy and not conventional electricity, as is the case at the moment.
Mines and Energy Permanent Secretary Joseph Iita told New Era last week that this would be an energy saving measure, which will ensure that the country for industrial use saves energy that is being wasted at present. He said the government was very serious about solar energy technology, noting that the country has sunlight all year round.
This intervention comes at a time when applications for solar energy technology have increased to an extent that the ministry cannot cope with demand. But Iita said the money that was allocated to financing schemes for renewable energy technology has been depleted.
Although the need for solar technology has increased more than tenfold compared to two years ago, Iita said there was no budget for this.
"It is through having enough electricity that we can become economically developed, yet we do not have government funding," he added.
Since the Namibian Renewable Energy Programme - a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Global Environment Facility (GEF)-funded project of the Ministry of Mines and Energy - signed collaboration agreements with the Konga Solar Revolving Fund in 2005 and, Bank Windhoek in March this year, the popularity of the technology has grown. This is in addition to the fact that increases in electricity tariffs have prompted people to look at alternative energy sources.
The projects started with over N$42 million (US$7 million), part of which (US$2.6 million) was committed by GEF, with Namibia pumping in US$2.2, and another US$2.2 million from other sources.
Statistics of the mines and energy ministry indicate that applications for loans have jumped from 40 in 2004 to 400 in 2005. Shimweeefeleni Hamutwe, an energy technical advisor at the ministry, told New Era yesterday that the increase was due to the integrated approach of the programme and the administrators.
Efforts to get statistics from the Konga Solar Revolving Fund proved futile.
At the GEF meeting in Cape Town last month, John Titus of the mines and energy ministry said that due to solar energy market transformation interventions, the ministry would not be able to finance the increase in demand.
To sustain the market growth, there would be the need to source diverse and sufficient funding for solar energy financing. Meanwhile, the GEF approved another US$2.6 million through NAMREP and the ministry as from end 2006, spread over the next 2.5 years. The additional funding will be used to further support interventions to grow the solar market in Namibia.
The country has embarked on a GEF-co-financed project on solar energy barrier removal to assist the government to address all market barriers, particularly financial ones.
Some of the barriers identified are the high cost of solar energy technology, lack of well marketed and affordable end-user financing schemes for such technology and a lack of knowledge by financiers to appraise the technology.
Solar home systems are currently popular amongst rural households living far from the electricity supply grid areas, while households in urban areas mostly demand solar water heaters, and photovoltaic pumps are commonly used amongst farmers. Apart from the number of applications for loans, the other indicators of the interest in solar technology are the enquiries made to suppliers of solar technology and the growing number of service providers in the sector.
Hamutwe said the numbers of enquiries have increased from 100 per month in 2004 to 650 per month in 2005, while the number of service providers has increased to 27.
He said a number of small and medium enterprises dealing in solar installations have sprung up in the 13 regions, thereby allowing people to save money through services that can be rendered in their own regions.
Previously, most consumers were ordering their services from Windhoek, a thing which increased the costs of getting the renewable energy technology.
It has been found that all Namibian households with electric geysers combined consume N$100 million worth of electricity every year. Suppose the government made it compulsory for all to use solar water heaters, the country would cut down its electricity consumption by between 15 and 20 percent.
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