Poor households are burdened with relatively high energy costs, says Peta Wolpe and Yachika Reddy.
Enormous inroads have been made in addressing energy poverty since democracy. However, despite many pro-poor policies, strategies and programmes in place, South Africa continues to grapple with the huge challenges of poverty and inequality.
Households require energy for essential services in order to satisfy basic human needs.
A lack of choice in accessing adequate, reliable, safe and environmentally benign energy services to support economic and human development is the way in which energy poverty manifests itself. The impact of energy poverty is substantial. It includes:
* Ill health arises from paraffin ingestion accidents, particularly among children; respiratory diseases from burning coal; and paraffin in homes, damp from lack of ceilings.
* We are talking about the negative impact on education through restricted opportunities to reading and studying – children studying in poor light provided by candles and paraffin lamps as well as being ill from respiratory diseases.
* We are talking about restricted opportunities to income-generating activities due to many hours spent collecting biomass as well as the reliance on candles or paraffin for lighting.
* We are talking about overall depressed living conditions.
Many factors contribute to the country remaining challenged by energy poverty while South Africa continues to experience rapid urbanisation.
Some 64 percent of the country’s population resides in urban areas, of which 40 percent are located in the metropolitan municipalities.
Our cities have historically developed along sprawling, low-density suburban lines. This was largely rooted in apartheid’s inequitable land distribution policies.
TheRDP programme of 1994 gave rise to the building of close to three million houses for the poor. However, these houses (until last year when new energy efficiency legislation for residential buildings was promulgated) were poorly insulated with no ceilings (resulting in negative respiratory health impacts), and located on urban margins where land is cheaply available.
Due to their location, the poor constantly experience inadequate levels of service delivery and are unable to access the opportunities of social resources and employment that cities have to offer.
Locking the poor into these locations, and continuing low-density suburban development of the wealthy, is socially, economically and environmentally unsustainable.
Urban energy poverty is particularly prevalent in informal settlements and includes families living in backyard shacks in overcrowded conditions.
Some 13.6 percent of the national population, 8 percent of which reside in South Africa’s largest cities (metros), lives in informal settlements.
The majority of informal settlements are located on the periphery of cities, and those that have access to electricity are generally receiving it through illegal connections.
In 1994, a key objective of the newly elected government was universal access to electricity for all of its citizens by 2012.
To this end the government embarked on an accelerated national electrification programme, targeted at low-income households. Universal access is determined by two important factors: 1) the number of households connected to electricity, either through the national grid or alternative sources such as solar panels and 2) the affordability of that electricity – poor households need to be able to afford electricity to benefit from its use.
In 1994 only 36 percent of the country had access to electricity. In 2012 the government announced that we had achieved 87 percent access to electricity.
However, that figure is taken from the 2011 national Census data and is based on those using electricity for lighting (which is used as a proxy for electrification) and includes approximately 1.1 million households that are not metered (do not have a formal electricity connection).
If this figure is added to the 2.1 million formal households still requiring an electricity connection according to the Department of Energy, then the proportion of electrified households stands at 77 percent.
The government intended to reach universal access by 2012 but recognised that due to infrastructure and electricity generation constraints, rural/urban migration and increasing growth rates in electricity demand that the goal of universal access would be difficult to achieve in the initial time frame.
Keeping pace with electrifying backlogs and at the same time servicing newly built and informal households has been a huge service delivery challenge.
The newly developed electrification road map driven by the Department of Energy has set a new target of 97 percent access by 2025.
In attempting to enable poor households to afford the use of electricity once they are connected, the government introduced a Free Basic Electricity (FBE) subsidy, which allows indigent households 50kWh of free electricity per month in order to meet basic energy needs.
However, access to FBE does not reach all indigent households. It is well documented that FBE is not reaching all of its intended beneficiaries – figures range from 30 percent to 69 percent.
Data is not reliable and this is partly due to varied approaches used by municipalities in targeting indigent households eligible for FBE. Some municipalities use an indigent register to determine the beneficiaries of FBE, others provide FBE based on electricity consumption thresholds.
The difference in definition and implementation approach by municipalities has resulted in not all poor households being classified as indigent or in all cases receiving the benefit. This has also given rise to some wealthy households receiving FBE due to low consumption levels. Furthermore, where multiple households (such as backyard dwellers) are connected to one meter their power consumption exceeds the benefit threshold.
Poor households are burdened with relatively high energy costs. According to the Department of Energy 2012 survey, 43 percent of South Africans are energy poor as they spend more than 10 percent of their income on energy needs.
Energy poverty also manifests itself in the persistent multiple fuel use patterns displayed by poor households across South Africa despite being electrified.
This means that almost seven million households continue to largely rely on unsafe, unhealthy forms of energy such as paraffin, coal and biomass, when they cannot afford to buy electricity.
Household energy use patterns emerging over the past 10 years show an increased uptake in electricity to fulfil basic household energy needs, particularly with respect to lighting and cooking and this is not surprising given the rate of electrification in the country.
It is true that considerable progress has been made, in fact unprecedented in South Africa’s history and at a pace that is recognised and commended internationally – if we consider that only 36 percent of the country was electrified in 1994 and now that figure sits at 77 percent; close to three million houses have been built and poverty levels have slowly declined.
Although there is strong articulation in almost all national government policies including the overarching recent National Development Plan, of the need to enhance development, increase employment, grow the economy and reduce poverty and inequality, the country continues to be faced with enormous challenges in this arena.
Cities face increasing pressure to provide adequate service delivery, promote efficient spatial planning and social integration.
Numerous policy instruments are in place to support local government in the delivery of basic services.
Yet effective implementation of these instruments in reaching the intended beneficiaries tends to be mired by institutional, regulatory and resource capacity constraints, among others.
Why do the developmental problems persist to the extent that they do, given the good intentions and financial investments through progressive policy development since democracy?
A lack of alignment of policies between departments and spheres of the government (national, provincial and local) is seen to hamper the process of effective implementation.
This is exacerbated by the lack of co-ordinated planning across spheres and sectors of the government. Moreover, municipalities have differential capabilities in terms of human, infrastructure and financial resources and this in turn impacts on the scale and reach of pro-poor interventions.
Municipalities are further constrained by their financial accounting and the regulations that they are accountable to laws such as the Municipal Finance Management Act. Decisions they take are driven by these regulations and the need to generate income in order to deliver on their constitutional mandates.
They are constantly see-sawing between delivery of basic services and good financial accounting with limited resources.
Data collection and reporting is not always adequate, consistent and robust. Government departments lack a co-ordinated and unified method of reporting. Major discrepancies exist in data provided by different government departments relating to the number of indigent households at municipal level, electrified households and households receiving FBE.
Without accurate data we do not have an adequate picture of the problem and this significantly impacts on planning and investment decisions.
Implementation of different solutions to dealing with the energy welfare of the urban sector shows that a multi-pronged and multi-stakeholder approach is necessary and a systematic and comprehensive review of policy, implementation and its efficacy will assist in bringing the kind of transformation and development that the country is working towards.
* Peta Wolpe and Yachika Reddy are with Sustainable Energy Africa (SEA), a not-for-profit organisation promoting sustainable energy approaches and practices in the development of South Africa and Africa. This article is based on a comprehensive report on Tackling Urban Energy Poverty in South Africa found at: www.cityenergy.org.za
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Newspapers.
Pretoria News