Powerdown in South Africa January 22, 2008
Posted by Ralph Pina in : Climate Change, Conservation, Sustainability , trackback
This post is only tangentially related to travel, but it has a lot to do with sustainability, so I thought I would vent here on this blog anyway. As I sit here writing this, South Africa has entered a period of rolling blackouts. The cause is uncontested: the government failed to allow the national power utility, Eskom, to create generation capacity way back in the ’90s. After an unprecedented period of economic growth the chickens have come home to roost and the reserve margin is down to 8% so that the grid has no resilience when capacity is temporarily reduced by an outage or when demand spikes. Meanwhile the demand trendline shows unabated growth. The crisis is expected to last for another seven years, by when additional generating capacity should come online.
But what interests me are the reactions to the crisis from my fellow citizens, which only serve to show how difficult it is to change behaviour and how invested in our energy-intensive consumer-age paradigm we are.
But first some background about power generation in South Africa. Eskom generates more electrical power than the rest of Africa together. However, most of this is generated by burning low-grade coal, of which the country possesses massive reserves. The consequences are twofold: a) our electricity remains amongst the cheapest in the world, not least because the costs of air and groundwater pollution and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have been conveniently externalised; b) we are the twelfth largest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world and our per capita emissions are higher than China’s. Access to cheap electricity has come to be a given, an entitlement and even a right, over many years. So the crisis has come as a rude shock to the populace and business in general, leading to disbelief and anger.
ecoAfrica has not escaped unscathed either. Our operations are interrupted for a couple of hours on a daily basis at present, meaning that our “shop” is effectively closed and productivity and service levels are negatively affected. However, I am aware that the situation in many other African countries is a lot worse, and has been so for years. Many countries are dependent on oil-fired generation and the inexorable increase in oil’s price threatens those countries’ development, and even social stability.
But I digress. In my “other” life I am an IT director at a leading South African university located in a university town. We have spent millions installing emergency diesel generators because as you can appreciate, power cuts are enormously disruptive to academic programmes. But that can be but one short-term response. Given that the university accounts for the lion’s share of the town’s activity and thus a significant proportion of its power consumption, the actual and rational response should be an immediate and intensive campaign to conserve energy on campus. This also makes good sense for reducing the university’s carbon footprint, thus exercising leadership in climate change responses - and now we have a compelling motivation to take the requisite steps. Obvious, isn’t it?
Apparently not. The first stage in dealing with trauma is denial. Although they cannot deny the existence of blackouts, many people are still engaged in the “anger” stage of apportioning blame either to the government, Eskom or affirmative action. Many rail against poor planning and increasingly, lately, against the unpredictability of the blackouts and the way in which “load-shedding” - what a wonderful engineering euphemism - is managed. Amongst some there is an attitude that “they got us into this, so let’s see if they can get us out”. Only a few seem to accept that demand is too high for the supply and that we as consumers of electricity need to review and curtail our own usage.
I have started to note how few households hang out their washing to dry since my daughter, who did some house-sitting recently, recounted how the home only had a tumble-dryer and no washing lines. And this in a Mediterranean climate characterised by “hot, windy and long summers”.
In the university IT building, since Eskom indicated more that a year ago that blackouts would occur, we have added tens of office air-conditioning units, and there are plans to add more. Proposals to rather invest that money in more energy-efficient equipment are not met with nearly the same levels of enthusiasm. An attitude of “we pay for the power, so we are entitled to use as much as we can afford to” sometimes seems to prevail. And while our electricity remains so cheap, this is a rational economic response.
Some of the most intransigent naysayers are amongst a few of my fellow engineers. As an engineer myself I can state, without fear of being accused of bigotry, that a fair number regard “green” initiatives, movements and “greenies” as a bit “soft” and consequently tend to frown upon any action or proposal that carries the emerald tinge. Concern for the environment and conservation, whether it be of energy or biodiversity, are regarded as fringe concerns. Also, many engineers, amongst others, have an unshakable faith that technology will solve all problems. I don’t wish to denigrate technological innovation and human ingenuity, but too often this faith is blind. William Catton referred to such faith as “technological cargoism”.
As I think about the situation more, I perversely welcome the crisis. Although it is a crisis of our own making that has not been precipitated by any constraint on reserves of non-renewable resources - such as would play out in a “peak coal” scenario - it is forcing people to think and consider their alternatives well before the inevitable shortages in fossil fuels occur. More importantly, it’s good for our carbon footprint and combating climate change. But climate change is too long-term, too remote, so a shortish-term, man-made crisis will have to suffice to change behaviour.
Comments»
[…] which asks what we as citizens and businesses are doing to curtail our consumption of energy. (Also see my post on this subject […]
Thanks Ralph, I really enjoyed reading this perspective.
Yes, all the salient points. Minds must change through this short-term load-shedding crisis so that on the other side we’re using less in the way of resources.
Ah Ralph,
Every now and then , i google the people back home and some of them have blogs already…
All very interesting points made. I know for sure that the whole Sa community here think that the end of the world is starting to happen in SA due to the ESKOM supply issues. I am just wondering what all these Diesel generators are going to do to the fuel price / supply in SA in the medium term.
Cheers ,
Calvin in London
p.s : Pity Prof Liesbeth Botha left the US .. ?