Pretoria - As the winter season envelopes South Africa, the Tshwane municipality on Thursday urged residents and businesses to find alternative sources of energy other than electricity in a bid to relieve the national power grid, which was struggling to meet capacity.
“The city has a number of interventions at the moment. The other thing that is critical is increasing community awareness through civic education. We are teaching our people to be very efficient in consuming electricity,” acting executive mayor of Tshwane, Eulenda Mabusela told African News Agency in Pretoria at a programme focused on energy efficiency.
“Please let us ensure that we minimise electricity and where it’s necessary, we should switch off. Let us switch to solar energy use as compared to the use of electricity,” she said.
Mabusela said the city was also ensuring that street lights, which often lit up during the day in the city, were monitored and switched off to save more electricity.
“On that note, we are encountering a problem whereby our street lights are being vandalised by people who abuse and smoke drugs on the streets. We keep repairing them, and that is a very serious challenge for us,” said Mabusela.
During the breakfast session, Tshwane announced a partnership with the National Business Initiative (NBI). The partnership would provide businesses in the region with support in the uptake of energy efficiency through the NBI’s private sector energy efficiency (PSEE) programme.
The energy initiatives were aimed at promoting energy saving habits among South Africans and encouraging South Africans to make use of alternative energy efficient resources such as solar powered devices, as well as stabilising the national power grid. These initiatives would contribute to reducing the need for loadshedding across the country.
Mabusela told delegates at the energy efficiency programme breakfast session that Tshwane had initiated a number of mitigation measures aimed at reducing its carbon footprint, while at the same time, creating new economic and job opportunities.
“Tshwane is the first municipality in South Africa to promulgate a Green Building Policy and by-law to facilitate the development of green buildings. Other interventions include renewable energy interventions and the electricity for all programme,” said Mabusela.
Joanne Yawitch, CEO of the NBI said their partnerships with several local governments across South Africa were resulting in significant energy savings.
“For businesses it is not only a concern of supply but also the issue of price. There is a relatively large energy price increase coming into effect in July and Eskom is going to Nersa (National Energy Regulator of SA) to request to double that increase,” said Yawitch.
“In doing this energy efficiency work, our experience is that, particularly for small and medium companies, increasingly, the cost of electricity is becoming a huge constraint on their ability to do business. Not that this doesn’t affect big business,” she said.
Yawitch said her organisation offered solutions which were focused on reducing electricity bills in the long run through efficient energy use which resulted in a decreased consumption of energy.
“We are hoping that this partnership around energy efficiency with Tshwane will have very tangible, concrete benefits for the city as well as for business,” said Yawitch.
“We hope companies will enroll into the programme and that we can provide you (businesses) a service that is going to enable you to contribute to a greener Tshwane and South Africa on one hand, and also for you to realise very real cost savings,” Yawitch told delegates at the session.
She urged companies to enroll on the PSEE programme and receive free accredited business support and solutions towards energy efficiency in their organisations.
In terms of the partnership, the PSEE would conduct energy assessments at businesses across several industry sectors to assist them in becoming more energy efficient and reducing energy consumption. A number of free energy workshops and other events would also be hosted across the city to facilitate access to the PSEE’s services.
In June 2013, the NBI - a voluntary coalition of South African and multinational companies committed to working towards sustainable growth and development in South Africa - was awarded £8.6-million (more than R150-million) by the UK Government through its Department for International Development (DFID) to implement the PSEE as a countrywide programme of support for energy efficiency improvement in the private sector.
The aim of the PSEE was to improve energy efficiency in commercial and industrial companies in South Africa through the provision of various services that would assist companies in identifying and implementing energy saving measures.
ANA