Jaya Josie
Ping, ping, my cell phone went off as I stood in the supermarket queue to pay the cashier. The woman behind me politely asked if the loud ping was my Eskom load shedding app informing me of the next round of electricity power cuts in my area.
I looked at my phone, and indeed, it was the load shedding app telling me that Stage 4 power cuts would continue for another two hours in my suburb. The woman asked me if I could kindly use my cell phone to check the power-cut schedule in her rural area as her cell phone battery died, and she needed to go home to charge it.
She told me she was a teacher living and teaching at a primary school in a rural area, and at least she had a small income and could afford a cell phone.
Recent academic studies by Edson Leroy Meyer and Ochuko Kelvin Overen reported that in South Africa, more than 3.5 million households do not have access to modern energy for lighting, cooking and heating. The study also highlighted the government’s acknowledgement of the impossibility of a universal electrification plan within the 2025 to 2030 time frame.
Over the past five years, power cuts or what is euphemistically called load shedding, have been a constant feature of most households, factories and other sectors of the economy in South Africa.
Load shedding has negatively impacted economic growth and exacerbated the triple challenges of unemployment, poverty and inequality in the country. The latest data from Statistics South Africa (February 2023) reported electricity production in South Africa decreased to 16709 Gigawatt-hour in February from 18024 Gigawatt-hour in January 2023.
While middle-income households in the suburbs are able to survive load shedding by installing generators, inverters, solar panels and alternative sources of electricity power, most rural households live and suffer in the dark.
By government’s own admission, the electrification of a 5 to 10% annual rate is insufficient for the country to achieve universal access to the grid by 2030. The report by Meyer and Overen suggests a new energy policy that recommends supplying 50kWh/month of electricity through renewable energy sources.
The report proposes a scheme of incentives to local governments and other role players to promote the use of renewable energy. It also proposes a system where the government may consider introducing technical training and internships for renewable energy through the Department of Higher Education and awareness programs for consumers in rural areas.
The use of renewable energy in rural areas is an important catalyst for addressing unemployment, poverty and inequality in South Africa. It is being used in other African countries with great success. However, the most successful and comprehensive application of a renewable energy policy to address poverty in rural areas is the experience in China.
The country’s use in rural areas of various sources of renewable energy has played a key role in reducing absolute poverty in China. The successful poverty reduction program in China was acknowledged by the United Nations and other international organizations. How did China’s renewable energy policy impact the lives of the population in the countryside, and can South Africa learn lessons from this experience?
As part of the poverty reduction programme, a solar photovoltaic poverty alleviation project was introduced that is more easily accessed and maintained. China set up solar power stations with an installed capacity of almost 26.36 million kilowatts and has benefited 4.15 million households in 60,000 villages. The annual power generation income has reached 18 billion yuan ($2.68 billion), which has also created 1.25 million jobs.
South Africa has a plentiful supply of sunshine and can learn from this experience as poverty reduction programmes through solar power can provide electrification to people in rural areas.
Added to other renewable energy projects, such as wind farms and bio gas plants solar, can increase the proportion of cleaner fuel in the rural energy mix in South Africa.
People in the rural areas of China from the 1950s up to the 1990s also went through the same experiences as people in South Africa.
Today, China is the leading global manufacturer of photovoltaic solar panels, wind turbines and implementer of biogas plants.
How did China achieve its electrification goals, and what lessons can South Africa and the rest of the developing and emerging markets learn from China?
China adopted three key strategies for achieving rural electrification of the country: co-ordinate all stakeholders, select appropriate technologies and embed electrification in development plans.
Coordinating all stakeholders in China meant the central government providing leadership and investment with local coordination and, where provincial government coordinated project implementation. For funding, Central Government was the key to cost sharing. Co-funding came from state-owned power companies and local governments. Some private firms funded photovoltaic (PV) projects. The lesson here is that reliable funding from the central government is essential.
Selecting appropriate technologies adopted in China meant taking account the expensive costs of grid connection and remotely located populations. The solution was to split electrification costs 50/50 between grid extension and off-grid PV connection. Maintenance and other costs for household PV connections were raised by levying a small nationwide renewable energy subsidy per kilowatt hour and raising this to close the funding gap created by increasing renewable generation. In very remote and hard-to-service areas, people were relocated and rehoused in easily accessible areas.
The final lesson from the experience in China is to embed electrification programmes within any poverty eradication strategy. This can be done through an infrastructure programme for every rural settlement.
The infrastructure programme in China covered power, roads, water, and telecoms. The electrification infrastructure promoted rural economic growth and higher incomes leading to increased electricity use, thus promoting further investment in rural electrification. This kind of feedback loop enabled sustainable electricity supplies reducing reliance on government subsidies. Such a program will create a multiplier effect in stimulating the home appliance industry for products such as TVs, washing machines, refrigerators and mobile phones.
Introducing renewable energy into South Africa’s energy mix strategy following the example from China can tap into the country’s vast supplies of solar, wind and biogas power. It will relieve the poverty-stricken households in rural areas and provide much-needed job opportunities and incomes for rural families. It will further support education and health services in areas that need these services most. Of course, the woman teacher from the rural village that I met in the supermarket will be able to charge her phone, and her students will have electricity in school and in their homes to pursue their education.
Perhaps one day, I will be able to delete the Eskom load shedding App and will not be disturbed by the constant sounds of the ping alert.
Prof Jaya Josie is a Visiting Professor at Zhejiang University International Business School and Adjunct Professor at University of Venda.