Rory Williams
Without partnerships between business, government, academics and civil society, the international accord reached at December’s climate negotiations in Paris will produce little more than hot air.
At a meeting of the Climate Change Coalition hosted by the City of Cape Town last Wednesday, Professor Harald Winkler, of UCT’s Energy Research Centre, observed that COP21 in Paris arrived at “an international treaty in all but name”.
We now have a bottom-up set of binding emissions targets, meaning that each country has determined its own target, but is obliged to report on progress.
To achieve our national target, each city will need to develop strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The City of Cape Town and the Western Cape have expressed commitment to developing the green economy. While this means that announcements by companies like Tesla to set up shop in Cape Town have been welcomed, there is more to it than developing technology.
Steve Nicholls, of the National Business Initiative, said at Wednesday’s meeting that business now understands that climate change is a risk and an opportunity requiring transformation of the global economy. He said that a couple of thousand big businesses around the world wrote a letter to the G20 group of the world’s largest economies, saying they want more ambitious goals, and for the first time at COP21 business presented text on the core issues they wanted to see agreement on – issues that go beyond emissions.
Mayor Patricia de Lille told the coalition: “We have already started this journey as Cape Town, but our approach to climate change is to put specific priority to those projects that can deliver co-benefits.” In other words, the City must not only mitigate climate change and adapt to its worst effects, but ensure that projects reduce poverty, deliver jobs and address other pressing concerns.
Municipal government will need to invest responsibly, but other actors need to leverage this investment to effect meaningful change.
The C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, of which the City of Cape Town is a member, is a strong advocate of the partnership approach. Hastings Chikoko, Africa regional director of C40 Cities, observed that just as business and civil society are not waiting for government action, cities are not waiting for national governments but are developing new ideas and strategies.
Cities and their mayors have greater flexibility than their parent nations. They can facilitate the transfer and application of best practice in ways that nations cannot, by engaging with other cities, obtaining finance and entering into a wide range of partnerships.
For renewable energy projects, for example, Cape Town has the ability to enter into agreements with independent power producers, regardless of the status of the nation’s sovereign guarantees. The City’s director of trade and investment, Lance Greyling, says the City has told national government: “We can help you increase renewable energy in South Africa using our good credit rating at financial institutions to procure that energy.”
De Lille spoke of a number of initiatives designed to enhance energy security, to reduce carbon emissions and to position Cape Town as a green manufacturing hub in Africa. Cape Town, she says, is determined to obtain national Department of Energy permission to purchase renewable energy from independent sources to reach a target of sourcing 10 to 20 percent of energy from renewables by 2020.
De Lille said: “I have this dream where I can see every single household in Cape Town generating their own electricity though photovoltaic panels, and then putting that back into the grid where the City can buy back the extra unused energy.”
It is already possible for homeowners to generate power and offset excess energy against their account with the municipality, but the contract terms are not favourable for the homeowner, so it will take time for this dream to become reality.
Another challenge is that the City relies heavily on revenue from selling Eskom’s electricity to residents and businesses, so improved energy efficiency and rooftop generation by consumers is not in the City’s financial interests, unless an innovative business model can be found.
Without a creative solution, whether the City replaces 20 percent of Eskom supply with its own power (it is setting up an electricity generation department in preparation) or buys it from others, it will lose out if we consume less energy from the grid. The City is already squeezed by lower sales, and higher prices to offset reduced consumption would make matters worse.
Energy security is about affordability as much as availability, so this is a challenge for creative collaboration.
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