Renewable Energy Opportunities in the Eastern Cape – Part 1
For many years South Africa experienced cheap and reliable electricity supply from Eskom and no consideration had to be given to “green” energy.
We heard about initiatives overseas and how they were producing new technology to generate this energy which was sustainable, but not cost effective.
The circumstances have changed quite drastically since those days and not only are we hearing from environmentalists that we should reduce electricity demand and improve energy efficiency, but we are also hearing this from large corporations, local government, and even Eskom themselves.
The sweeping power outages, or blackouts, that were used for Eskom’s load shedding program caused industrial and domestic users to seriously start looking for other alternatives to energy supply.
The Eastern Cape is in one of the most suitable positions for solar, wind and biomass projects. The beauty of our area is that we have vast tracts of underutilized land, prime areas to connect to the electricity grid, good support of raw materials to produce technologies and a large labour pool. The Eastern Cape also has areas that are not serviced by Eskom and these present great potential for off-grid solutions that renewable energy can offer.
The jobs opportunities associated with this industry are also extensive, with great potential for much needed job creation. In a study recently conducted by the ELIDZ it was measured that the provincial GDP is shrinking by 1.95% per annum on payments made to Eskom, i.e. money being spent outside our province. If the Eastern Cape were to purchase some of its energy locally we could reverse this trend. If we converted from 100% of Eskom’s energy and used 35% of this to purchase green energy, we would create 112 000 jobs and by the year 2038 we would have created R471bn in revenue for the province.
Along with opportunities for skilled labour, it has also been interesting to note the potential for unskilled labour and matching this to the raw material potential of the province. We can use an example of biomass here.
Basically the Eastern Cape has a problem with can actually be turned into an opportunity (with profit):
An innovative solution for the removal of the invasive Black Wattle trees could be a mobile pyrolysis unit in which the East London Industrial Development Zone (ELIDZ) has plans to develop a pilot project. This is a 1MW unit which is attached to a truck and then driven to areas with dense Wattle growth. Local community members can then be hired to remove and chip the invasive species and this is fed into the pyrolysis unit. The unit then burns the waste with zero emissions into the atmosphere and there are two main byproducts. The first being heat which then drives a turbine and creates green energy which goes directly onto the grid and the second byproduct being biochar, which acts as a natural fertilizer which improves the yield per hectare of agricultural land.
Therefore by taking biomass to create energy the province will create a large amount of jobs for unskilled labour, improve water security, create energy security, improve soil conditions and support current governmental projects such as “working for water”.
The Eastern Cape currently has just over 30 million tons of biomass currently available and most of it in the poorest area of the province, the Transkei.
Text by Chris Ettmayr, Senior Researcher: Business Development, ELIDZ
