Clean energy strategy paying off

Melanie Gosling

Environment Writer

SOUTH Africa’s renewable energy programme will prevent 45 million tons of carbon emissions being pumped into the atmosphere annually, according to Energy Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson.

Joemat-Pettersson said in her keynote address at the Windaba conference in the City yesterday, read by Karén Breytenbach, head of the Department of Energy’s independent power producers’ programme, that one of the most pressing problems facing the world was global climate change.

South Africa was the biggest emitter of carbon emissions in Africa, and in 2012 ranked 13th globally, mainly because of its heavy reliance on fossil fuels in the energy mix and energy intensive industries.

Since the renewable energy programme began in 2011, until September this year, wind and solar had generated 5.46 terrawatt-hours of electricity and prevented 5.6 million tons of carbon emissions.

“As more projects come online this will grow exponentially. Once the full capacity of renewable energy in the programme is operational, we will see 45 million tons of carbon emissions displaced annually, offsetting 9.67 percent of national emissions reported in 2010,” Joemat-Pettersson said.

Once the ministerial allocation of 13 225MW of renewables was up and running, the carbon savings would “point South Africa in the right direction to achieve a target of 400 million tons to 600 million tons by 2030 – in line with the Copenhagen Accord”.

She was referring to President Jacob Zuma’s commitment, made at the UN climate change talks in Copenhagen in 2009, that South Africa would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 42 percent by 2025 below “business as usual” – the trajectory the country would follow if it made no cuts in emissions.

Joemat-Pettersson said one of the key drivers behind the success of the renewable energy programme was the drop in price.

When the programme started in 2011 the average price for wind energy was R1.41 a kilowatt-hour. This had now dropped to 71c a kilowatt-hour, a decrease of 50 percent.

“We are in the position to say we have some of the cheapest wind energy globally.”

Wind energy had also become cost-competitive with the price of electricity generated by newly built fossil fuel power stations.

“There were some pessimists who felt that renewable energy would not add much to the grid in terms of electricity generation in our most constrained times during peak hours. Well, I am proud to report that of wind energy’s overall contribution to electricity generation, 15 percent had come during peak hours over the last six months – and will continue to play a key role as the installed capacity grows, filling our peak hours with clean energy,” Joemat-Pettersson said.

An understated benefit of renewables was that for each kilowatt-hour of renewable energy that displaced fossil fuels in the national grid, 1.2 litres of water would be saved. At full operation, renewables would save 52 million litres of water a year.

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