Bad things often happen with a good outcome. And so it can be with Eskom's inability to deliver enough electricity for our needs and with an oil price of more than $100 (R685) a barrel.
Most South Africans, and especially business people, groaned when they heard the Eskom CEO Jacob Maroga declare this week that power outages (they prefer to call it "load shedding") could be a part of our life for the next five to eight years. It is hugely inconvenient to consumers and detrimental to economic growth.
Eskom went down further on the list of popular institutions when they applied for big tariff hikes. This would hurt economic growth and is yet another kick in the consumer's stomach, we heard. And that's not the last bad news on the energy front: crude oil is about to cross the psychologically crucial mark of $100 a barrel, which would mean more than R8 for a litre of petrol at the South African pumps.
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So what good can come from that? The stark reality is that expensive and unreliable energy can only be good for the long-term health of our planet. Our electricity is among the cheapest in the world and our consumption among the highest if one excludes the top industrial countries.
With the exception of the small amounts of power generated by Koeberg and Cahora Bassa, our electricity comes from burning coal, which pumps tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere every day.
Expensive power will teach us to use it more sparingly. If your electricity bill reaches R1 000 per month, it will concentrate your mind to switch off your geyser during daytime and to switch to low-energy light bulbs.
If power outages are going to continue and increase in regularity, it will stimulate consumers to install alternative energy sources. With the more expensive fuel it isn't really feasible for small consumers to buy generators, so people will increasingly install solar and wind-generated power systems.
The main argument against these green alternative energy sources is that they're too expensive compared to electricity generated by burning coal.
The more expensive conventional electricity becomes, the greater the enthusiasm for alternatives will become. And the greater the enthusiasm, the more development and technological advancement there will be and the lower the prices for these energy forms will become.
I keep on hoping the people in charge of our most expensive white elephant, arms developer Denel, and our otherwise innovative and gutsy entrepreneurs would come to realise that developing alternative energy technologies could become South Africa's big breakthrough in world trade.
If we used the billions of rand we spent on the development of the attack helicopter nobody in the world wants, the Rooivalk, on developing more efficient and cheaper solar panels or photovoltaic cells, we would be in a position to supply the whole world by now - and not have had an energy crisis ourselves.
The development of electric vehicles is another field where South African engineers and scientists can put us ahead of the rest of the pack, especially because the oil lobby is not as strong here as in the United States and Europe.
If the technology serving the batteries used to store power in vehicles had progressed as quickly as, for instance, the cellphone battery technology over the past 10 years, we would all be driving electric vehicles already.
Environmentalists and climate change activists can do a lot to change ordinary citizens' thinking on global warming and the more responsible use of energy.
But the biggest problem isn't the domestic consumer, it is big industry. We can all behave very responsibly and the government can force the installing of solar geysers in all new houses, but if we can't get our big businesses and factories to cut their carbon emissions radically, we won't make much progress.
It was really good to see that our cabinet minister tasked with the environment, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, has had his first meeting with leaders in the private sector to start a dialogue on climate change. His guests included the bosses of giants like Eskom, Transnet, De Beers, Kumba Iron Ore, Pick 'n Pay and BP.
I was told the conversation over dinner was very cordial, but it is inevitable that these interactions will have to become more structured and adversarial as the urgency for South Africa to reduce its carbon emissions becomes greater.
The private sector should take global warming very seriously and take drastic and immediate steps to reduce their own carbon footprint, or government will have to force them.
(Perhaps our previous minister of the environment Valli Moosa can play a strong role in helping the private sector along. He was recently named as one of 50 international leaders most influential on environmental issues - and he is chairman of our biggest polluter, Eskom.)
We are fortunate to have a cabinet minister in charge of this important issue who is hard-working, well-informed and committed. Van Schalkwyk is taken very seriously in the rest of the world. We should too.
- This article was originally published on page 14 of Daily News on January 10, 2008
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