Energy

Bishop Geoff Davies, deputy chairperson of NECCSA and director of the SA Faith Communities’ Environment Institute offers the following reflections on current concerns around energy supply and energy demands.

Cape Town has again suffered electricity “outages”.  In the excellent contributions to the energy debate in the Cape Times, with cogent arguments for both renewable and nuclear energy, Eskom and the nuclear lobby continue to maintain an “either/or” stance instead of a “both/and” position.  Their derisory attitude to renewable energy cannot continue in the face of climate change, which will be far more costly than any increase in tariffs that renewable energy may cause.

We know heavy industry needs a constant and reliable energy foundation.  We don’t dispute that.  We are happy to acknowledge that Koeberg shut down in November for good safety reasons.  But why are we dependent on one monopolistic supplier?

If we all had photo voltaic panels on our houses and if communities were allowed to join together to construct community based wind generation, which is fed into the grid as is happening in Germany, Denmark, California to name a few examples, then Cape Town would not have come to a grinding halt when Koeberg had to shut down.  Essential services like traffic lights and lifts would continue. 

I challenge Eskom to produce the figures for us.  Instead of spending R14.5 billion – is it R16b now? - on a model of the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR), spend that amount on wind energy.  Instead of spending R133 billion on new coal stations, invest that amount on renewable energy and let our present power stations continue to carry the burden of supplying industry with its “cheap” electricity.

Eskom does not even have to spend that R133 billion if it is willing to loosen its monopoly and open up electricity generation to individuals and communities.  In parts of Europe householders are subsidized to install renewable energy units.  Even if we can’t get subsidies, if I am able to feed electricity into the grid and get credit for it, I would install my own photo voltaic panels. Having paid off the cost, I would be getting free electricity and credit when I feed it into the grid.

If communities could form wind farms, to generate electricity in outlying towns and villages, the national grid would be freed to supply electricity to the heavy users.  I wager that we could generate 50% of our needs this way and just think of the employment opportunities that would be created by these “small-scale” community projects and the growth in industry in wind generators and photo voltaic panels.

Eskom argues that wind is unreliable, operating 20% of the time.  I hear the wind does not blow at Cape Agulhas 12 days in the year, while the Northern Cape rarely has a cloudy day.  We have an abundance of wind, sun and wave energy in South Africa. Why don’t we harness it?

Will Eskom not do this because it does not want to loose its monopoly - and the profits that go with it? We really have no alternative but to pursue the renewable energy course.  If global warming continues unabated, the future costs are mind boggling and horrific.

Because of the threat of global warming, nuclear may be preferable to coal, but we need to know that nuclear generation is by no means innocent, when taking into account the CO₂ generated to mine Uranium and the energy involved in the production of cement and the construction of the nuclear power station (40,000 tons of re-inforced steel and 300 000  cubic metres of cement used in the construction of Koeberg).Then there is the cost of decommissioning and the unresolved problem of the disposal of waste which we will leave to the future generations for thousands of years. 

We also need to ask why we in South Africa bear the cost of developing the PBMR when this technology has been tried and abandoned by other countries?  If we have to go the nuclear route, is the PBMR the right one?  There are numerous warnings over the escalating costs, and Eskom refuses to release details of the financial viability. 

Think again of how many wind mills and solar panels we could erect for the price of a nuclear power station. Having been set up, renewable energy is benign and virtually free.

We are told by the head of Eskom that we have to provide “cheap” energy to attract investment.  Since when is our electricity cheap, when we produce acid rain and some of the highest pollution levels of the world?  SA is in the top ten per capita greenhouse gas emitters in the world.

We are seeking to attract a large aluminium smelter at Coega as an “anchor” investment. We are offering “cheap” subsidised electricity, with negotiations behind closed doors, to secure this key development.  But for us to spend R133 billion to produce polluting “cheap” electricity from coal is quite counter-productive.

So, big energy generators, we know you need to provide constant, reliable electricity, but what about permitting the public and small communities the opportunity to harness renewable energy?  It is not something that has to be tested and tried.  It is already being widely implemented in many parts of the world.  All it needs is the go-ahead from Eskom and, presumably, the new National Energy Regulator (Nersa) and the regional electricity distributors (REDs) and we can start tomorrow.

But we are suspicious. Eskom still has a “trial” wind farm in the Cape and it took four years for the licensing of the private initiative wind farm at Darling. And we are concerned for we cannot continue to abuse the natural world in our present manner. If Eskom continues with its monopolistic practices, relying on 95% coal generation, the natural world will exact a far higher price through climate change and its resultant damage. 

Quite simply, we have to find ways of generating energy without destroying the world. The South African civil society organization “groundWork”, which supports communities facing environmental threats and injustices, states in its 2005 report “Whose Energy Future?”, that a sustainable future is possible, but only if it is based on people’s control of resources. 

We in South Africa, following our dramatic transition to democracy, could show the world that we can move resources from the control of giant and multi-national corporations into the hands of the people – for the good of all.