Although renewable energy infrastructure may initially be expensive to implement, South Africa cannot afford the long-term socio-economic costs of not doing so.

This was said on the first day of the Climate Justice Conference being held on the Goedgedacht farm outside Malmesbury by activist and Green Connection founder, Liz McDaid.

"If Eskom is allowed to make its own decision about future power generation (given that it is aiming to use very expensive nuclear energy generation), it will trap the government into an escalating, potentially unaffordable spending spiral in order for the poor to buy basic goods and service," said McDaid. High electricity tariffs mean price hikes across the board, perpetuating the poverty problem, which can, and has to, be solved with renewable energy.

She said while government has demonstrated commitment to vulnerable South Africans in largely keeping social grants abreast with the cost of electricity, economic growth will not reflect in the betterment of lifestyle as more and more money goes into electrifying houses.

Discrepancies in access to energy between the affluent and the poor in South Africa led to continued frustrations and hampering of people's ability to find employment.

She said South Africans had a perception that 'clean' energy from renewable sources could supply the relatively low energy requirements of the poor, but there was an aspiration to "get onto the grid" to

extract greater amounts of electricity in keeping with middle class consumer expectations.

However, middle-class levels of power consumption needed to be revolutionised, and if the country invested significantly in clean energy now, the long-term costs would be less expensive.

"The rich must aspire to a low carbon economy."

Christian Au, a climate change consultant doing his PhD on the integration of developing countries into a global climate regime, used an animated graph to illustrate South Africa's dismal performance from 1980-2004 in decoupling economic growth from carbon output compared to countries such as China and India. While China had made great strides in mitigating the effects of energy consumption while uplifting the poor, South Africa needed to protect the poor, who bear the brunt of climate change, by ensuring they have access to renewable energy, said Au.

"Without economic growth and access to energy the situation of the poor in South Africa will not improve."