The South African Civil Society Information Service (Johannesburg)
Saliem Fakir
8 September 2008
(Page 2 of 2)
Despite the fact that Eskom will be putting up 100MW of wind-power and is considering a 100MW concentrated solar power plant in the Northern Cape. There is a need for more investment in renewable energy to improve our energy mix and reduce our carbon footprint.
Solar power, such as solar water geysers, is still to take-off on a mass-scale. These require new building codes and municipal by-laws together with better subsidies for solar geysers to be more widely adopted by citizens in the country.
Solar water heating systems fall under a wider energy efficiency drive. South Africa’s energy usage intensity is still too high. The lowering of this energy usage will require much stronger government, private and citizens’ wide action.
While we are all in this together with the big wide world, the dependence on a central energy system makes individual citizens vulnerable to failures and constraints that may emanate from a central supply system. While the rich may, with time, be able to absorb the shocks, the poor are less capable of doing so. The poor are already suffering energy shortages as a result of their inability to pay for energy.
There are three fronts that need to be fought for: 1) better policy on the energy mix so that there is a good balance between central and local supply; 2) more incentives for citizens to install autonomous energy systems even if it partially meets their needs; and 3) greater neighbourhood, community or institutional actions from universities, firms and others to engage the energy challenge at the micro-level where there is less reliance on central government to provide all the innovation and solutions.
The oil crisis can be a wonderful opportunity for citizens' action and energy security. It requires a change of mind-set. Part of that change is to so say: ‘I too can do something about it’.
This article by Saliem Fakir, associate director of the Centre for Renewable and Sustainable Energy and senior lecturer at Stellenbosch University, was distributed by the South African Civil Society Information Service.
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