Renewable energy, now

Mmegi Editor | Tuesday August 12, 2014 11:08

As he and his predecessors have dutifully done over the years, Energy Minister,Kitso Mokaila, assured his audience that government is committed to national level uptake of renewable energy and is in fact working on several projects to ensure this takes place.

Compelling as Mokaila’s speech was, the trouble with it is that most of the ears in the conference room at GICC have heard the same pronouncements before. They have heard about the 1.3MW Phakalane solar plant, the planned 100MW solar power station and the various biofuel initiatives across the country. They have also heard about the Energy Policy and its goal to have a quarter of the country’s energy renewable by 2030.

The incredulity at GICC yesterday is symptomatic of the general mistrust investors and other stakeholders have in the government process. The stop-start approach to the introduction of renewables is just one sad example of bureaucratic hesitance throttling good initiatives with the attendant opportunity costs and service delivery stasis.

Over the years, from doomed projects such as Manyana, to the National Photovoltaic Electrification Programme to the Motshegaletau village initiative, renewable energy has promised high and delivered low.

In a cruel irony for the promise-weary taxpayer, government funded a 2004 study mockingly titled “Identifying and Overcoming the Barriers to Widespread Adoption of Renewable Energy”.

Should we appear to be unfairly dismissing the State’s efforts, it should be remembered that government placed itself in the gunsights of public critique on energy by appointing itself the sole provider of electricity to Batswana. The BPC continues to be the sole buyer of electricity in Botswana, meaning any generation must be routed through the Corporation which also owns and maintains the national grid.

Many experts blamed the electricity crisis that began in 2008, on poor foresight at BPC and policymaking paralysis in central government. That same foresight and paralysis when added to the lack of enthusiasm for renewable energy, is the reason our electricity supply continues to be precarious. The myopic overreliance on coal and the billions of Pula in coal energy subsidies, without similar attention to renewables, slow-marched the economy into loadshedding.

And as the positive feasibility study into the 100MW solar power plant gathers dust, once again Mokaila needs to be requested to put our money where his mouth is. Look east where Eskom yesterday signed a R1.1 billion debt deal for the construction of a 100MW solar power station in the Northern Cape.

With international partners increasingly unwilling to finance coal and with our 320 days per year of sunshine, can our taxpayer funds find an alternative and complementary home in renewable energy? Now. Please.

                                                     Today’s thought

       “Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status.”

                                                    - Laurence J. Peter