Prospects for renewable energy in SA

Nica Richards

South Africa has the potential to become a global force in clean power generation, if it is willing to take a few cues from Sweden.

A mild winter in Sweden and commitment to ditching fossil fuels have culminated in the closing down of the country’s last coalfired power plant.

An announcement last month revealed the last of the KVV6 boilers at Vartaverket in Hjorthagen, eastern Stockholm, which had been providing heat and electricity to citizens since 1989, had officially closed in a bid to reduce emissions.

The plant, owned by Stockholm Exergi, closed the plant’s first boiler before the winter of 2019-2020. Chief executive Anders Egelrud said the move was not only a milestone for the company, but “an important marker for the change taking place in the entire energy industry”.

Just 40 years ago, the region was almost completely fossil fuel-dependent. Now, 40% of its electricity comes from nuclear power reactors. The remaining 60% is a combination of hydro, wind, biofuels and waste, and 1% fossil fuels.

Sweden is the third European country to phase out coal completely, after Belgium and Austria.

But how practical is it to use a developed, first-world country as a baseline for setting up sustainability goals for South Africa?

In the coal section of the department of mineral resources and energy’s integrated resource plan for 2019, government’s intentions to hold on to the fossil fuel for “the foreseeable future” are clearly illustrated.

There are plans to make use of efficient coal technologies, such as high efficiency, low emission coal (HELE), carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS) and carbon capture and storage (CCS) to decrease as much carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere as possible.

Using CCUS and CCS technology, coal is captured, transported and either used, or stored in geological rock formations. But sucking CO2 out and storing it safely would be a costly business.

Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) energy portfolio manager Liz McDaid warned that nuclear brings with it a host of new health risks, such as radiation poisoning, long-term nuclear waste storage and nuclear accidents. In addition, nuclear was time consuming to build.

“Why would you want to do that when renewable energy technologies exist that enable us to harvest the sun and the wind to make electricity?”

Questioning the sustainability of renewable energy was a futile process, because “as long as we continue to run our energy system with fossil fuels, we will not be able to reduce our carbon footprint,” said McDaid