Johannesburg - If South Africa were split into two time zones, electricity peak demand times would differ, easing the strain on the power grid during certain times in the day.
And if South Africa were to adapt and go green as well as take advantage of the save-and-re-use approach across all spheres, R9 billion would be added to the economy.
These were some of the suggestions and findings that surfaced at the launch of the State of Green Technologies in South Africa report in Rosebank, Joburg, on Thursday.
The report, which the Academy of Science of South Africa commissioned, was written by an eight-member panel of experts chaired by Professor Eugene Cloete, the vice-rector for research and innovation at Stellenbosch University.
He said South Africa was far below international standards in its uptake of green technologies.
“We are, to a large extent, a resource economy. We take a lot of things out of the soil, a lot of minerals and we add value to them, and in some cases we export them and sell them.
“So the challenge we have – not only in South Africa but also worldwide – is how to grow the economy at a rate that is sufficient to provide jobs without negatively impacting the environment.”
Cloete said going green was not just about using or buying certain technologies, but also involved changing people’s mindsets and shifting norms.
“The green economy worldwide has focused to a large extent on the energy sector, and we have at the moment an energy crisis as openly stated by Eskom. Here, there are a number of things we can do if we just look at the water energy excess, for instance.
“To get water out of our tap in a city requires a lot energy. So, if we use less water, we use less energy. In fact, it was calculated a number of years ago that if we could save 20 percent of our water, we would save the energy produced by one of Eskom’s power stations.
“We need to get that message out, it’s a different way of thinking – cutting down on energy by saving on water,” Cloete said.
He said the government must play an active role in developing green technologies instead of merely implementing policies, and if it was policies that were standing in the way, they must be scrapped.
“Legislation plays an important role here. Legislation, for instance, can be a limit where the private sector that produces energy cannot sell the energy to Eskom. You would’ve heard in the past week or two that the president has mentioned the possibility of buying energy from the private sector that produces energy more than what they themselves can use. It is really crucial that we do that,” Cloete said.
“Another idea which came out of a debate (among panel members) was having two time zones in South Africa so that the Western Cape, in fact, starts an hour-and-a-half later in summer because the days end by nine, half-past-nine in the evening.”
Cloete said the overload on the electricity grid came in at peak times.
The reasons for that was that there were a number of key industries that used most of the energy in the country.
“So they push the energy supply over the tipping point during the peak times when all of us get up in the morning and when we make food in the evening. That’s a different way of thinking,” he said.
The Star