SA's future energy mix up for discussion
4 August 2010
South Africa will have a clearer picture of the future of its electricity mix and supply by the end of the year, says the Department of Energy's acting deputy director-general of electricity, nuclear and clean energy, Ompi Aphane.
Aphane was briefing Parliament's portfolio committee on energy in Cape Town this week on public comments received by the department on its Second Integrated Resource Plan (IRP).
Draft future energy policy
He said the plan is to have a revised second draft of the IRP2 – which will present various scenarios for the country's future energy policy – by October, and to have the final plan promulgated by November.
Leading up to this, the department plans to release a draft of the IRP2 for public comment next month, and public hearings will be held with the National Energy Regulator (Nersa).
The scenarios will be built using 29 parameters, including the impact on South Africa's electricity supply of climate change, water availability, price elasticity of demand, a carbon tax, distributions infrastructure, and renewable energy.
The department had received 81 submissions from the public, including from non-governmental organisations, academics, consultants, industry and business.
A total of 831 specific inputs had been fed into a database and were now being used to build the various scenarios.
Many of the comments were around renewable generation and the IRP2 consultation process itself – with most of the respondents adding that they were impressed with the process.
Low carbon economy, renewable energy
Most of the respondents called for a low carbon economy and for renewable energy – such as wind, solar and geothermal – to make up between 20% and 75% of South Africa's electricity mix by 2050.
Many of the respondents were strongly against coal and nuclear as future energy solutions, pointing out the difficulty of obtaining funding for nuclear and coal.
They also pointed out the importance of considering new technologies still emerging, such as solar hydrogen technology and sugar fan fibre.
Aphane said South Africa faced tough choices around the future of its energy mix, adding that the economy couldn't grow in an energy-constrained environment.
He said at present, available capacity would not be able to keep up with future demand, meaning the threat of blackouts would increase. Another challenge was that the costs of clean technologies were high and that international agreements on financing these technologies had to still be concluded, he said.
The IRP2, which is part of the department's Integrated Energy Plan, looks at the electricity sector, and plans would also be developed for liquid fuels and gas, he said.
Resources, skills, infrastructure
Aphane said the IRP2 would take into consideration whether the country had enough primary energy sources, skills, land and transmissions infrastructure to meet its energy needs.
The plan also needed to meet funding requirements and answer what the future costing of electricity would be, what would be required to meet the country's energy needs, and whether there was sufficient confidence from South Africans in seeing the plan through.
It also had to consider how energy needs could help to grow the country by complementing the Department of Trade and Industry's Industrial Policy Action Plan (IPAP), which was launched earlier this year and aims to ramp up the country's industrial capacity.
Each scenario will describe the effect on the price of electricity, security of supply, multiplier effects and the effects of carbon on the environment.
Public comments on all 29 parameters of the IRP2 can be found at Department of Energy's Integrated Resource Plan website.
Source: BuaNews
