Housing in Southern Africa April 2016

Energy Efficiency, Green Building & IBTs

City aims to be energy secure In a bid to continue on an upward trajectory of economic growth and job creation, the City of Cape Town aims to look at alternative ways of procuring energy for the city and province.

A ccording to Executive Mayor, Patricia de Lille, “We have re- alised that we cannot leave the future of energy security in the hands of Eskom. We must take our destiny into our own hands and work with our partners. We have re-evaluated our role in terms of energy supply and no longer want tomerely be distribu- tors of electricity but want to become energy creators as well.” The City of Cape Town has taken a strategic decision to relook at their approach to energy and the business model underpinning its electricity department. “We have started work on a number of projects where we are creating a new model for energy generation and distribution. We are using our Steenbras Dam to effec- tively avoid stage 1 load shedding, as well as the implementation of low curtailment schemes in some of our industrial areas. Some companies have been able to instantaneously reduce their energy usage thereby avoiding a total shut down,” she said. De Lille is proud of the fact that Cape Town is the first city in South Africa with a feed-in tariff for house- holds, who are generating their own electricity through photovoltaic (PV) panels, and want to feed excess elec- tricity into the city’s grid. She says this allows households

and businesses to play a part in pro- viding energy solutionswhilebuilding local resilience for the future. “We have signed small-scale embedded electricity generation contracts with Black River Park In- vestments and 17 other major com- mercial industrial customers who are able to feed electricity into the grid. We have also signed contracts with 43 residential customers who are able to feed into the grid in a legal and responsible manner.” She cites other examples of en- ergy efficiency such as retrofitting the lights in our buildings, as well as traffic and street lights. All 1 500 traf- fic lights now have efficient LED light bulbs and more than 25 000 street lights have been retrofitted. These initiatives, conducted progressively over the past six financial years, have saved over 70 000 Megawatt hours, which translates into savings of over R100 million. The lighting retrofit- ting of the Civic Centre is currently underway where around 20 000 light fittings are being upgraded to LED technology, with occupancy sen- sors linked to timers and daylight

harvesting. The payback period is less than three years, and the electricity demand saving of 1.2 Megawatts will save an additional R6 million in the first year, and more than R36 million over the next five years. Another vital component of the city’s energy security programme has been the installation of more than 45 000 solar water heaters on roofs across Cape Town. The solar water heater programme has so far added R774million into the economy and in this last year alone has saved almost 120 000 MWh of electricity, resulting in savings of over R256 million for residents. “We are also engaging National Government on building our own renewable energy plants, purchasing directly from Independent Power Pro- ducers (IPPs), and bringing natural gas to the Western Cape. We have set ourselves a target of sourcing 10% to 20%of our energy needs from renew- able sources by 2020,” says de Lille. She concludes, “We know that we must reduce our own dependence on electricity sales. The future is renew- able energy, not nuclear.” ■

April 2016