Mantashe is pumping gas
The minister believes liquified petroleum gas is needed in the energy mix, but some experts are not convinced of its merits
Beat blackouts by shifting to gas. That’s the call of Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe, who says liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) can offer a quick, effective solution to meet South African households’ energy needs.
But Hartmut Winkler, professor of physics at the University of Johannesburg, says the government’s sudden emphasis on gas raises eyebrows.
Mantashe, on 1 April, published the draft LPG rollout strategy, which seeks to provide a framework for expanding the use of liquefied petroleum gas.
“Power shortfalls in recent years have emphasised the need for South Africa to diversify its energy mix and, in so doing, reduce heavy dependence on electricity especially for cooking and space heating,” the strategy reads.
The country endured 859 hours of power cuts last year, according to data released by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research last month. This equates to about 35 days in the year.
The strategy says inadequate supply infrastructure facilities, having to hoard cylinders, the high cost of LPG, vertical integration of the supply chain that creates entry barriers to new entrants and the negative perception of LPG regarding safety are hurdles.
Limited LPG infrastructure, ranging from import facilities to storage facilities, has resulted in the inadequate supply of LPG, with the shortfall being met by imports. This, too, is constrained by inadequate importation and storage infrastructure.
Assuming the consumption of LPG doubles, the country will need to import 300000 tonnes, which is five ships of 5 000 tons capacity a month, according to the strategy.
Winkler says: “There may be an association between this move and the much-criticised award of 20 years of 1 220MW [megawatts] emergency generating capacity to the Turkish Karpowership consortium.
“The LPG rollout strategy document makes specific mention of gas imports and storage and claims that there is a critical need to boost these. I do not find the arguments for the criticality and urgency of this matter to be very convincing.
“There is already a huge amount of mistrust in the energy sector, and the rationales offered for why certain strategies are adopted and how decisions in favour of these are pushed — for example, new nuclear. This latest move will no doubt again be viewed with massive suspicion.”
Nicolette Pombo-van Zyl, the editor of the power journal ESI Africa, says: “From a bulk storage perspective, we don’t currently have the number of facilities that make for the widespread use of LPG at the moment.
“There’s a lot of infrastructure build that needs to go into it. And is this the amount of investment that you want to go into, bearing in mind that you have no idea whether the uptake in the residential or even commercial market is going to feed into that investment.”
The average household, she says, is comfortable with the way that electricity reaches into their home.
“If you are not on the grid, you’re waiting to get that kind of service around electricity. So you’re not even thinking of LPG as an alternative. There are pockets of communities that use LPG at the moment.”
Energy economist Lungile Mashele says there has, in recent years, been a concerted effort by various municipalities to focus on LPG. “Now that we are going to be looking at gas coming in through the ports and having pipelines from the coast coming inland, then we could possibly see a greater push for domestic gas now.”
Mantashe’s department will embark on safety and awareness campaigns “to assist the public in making the right choices by switching from using biomass, coal, electricity and illuminating paraffin” to LPG for household thermal needs.
This will include reducing indoor pollution and the concomitant savings on the health costs thereof, according to the strategy.
“These benefits would not be achievable without the requisite infrastructure and appliances which include cylinders, stoves and heaters that comply with applicable specifications and standards,” says the strategy on the “environmentally friendlier” and “affordable thermal fuel for households”.
But the cost of LPG makes it out of reach for many households, says Mashele. “I haven’t really seen the market translation to poor homes, but I’ve definitely seen a massive growth in gas products for middle-class people.”
Gadibolae Dihlabi, the managing director of the Liquefied Petroleum Gas Association of South Africa, says it looks forward to partnering with the government.
“We need to overcome misconceptions around the safety of LP gas and continue to educate consumers on the safe use of LP gas products and appliances,” she says.
“The security of product supply across the country needs to be assured, and robust infrastructure and logistics channels must be in place to ensure the uninterrupted distribution of LP gas.”
Liziwe Mcdaid, the strategic lead of the nonprofit Green Connection, says reducing dependence on Eskom electricity would improve energy security and “so at first glance this does not seem to be a bad strategy. However, gas as a transition fuel is probably not a good argument in 2021. It might have been 20 years ago … At the moment, we have an attitude of going for all fossil fuel alternatives with lip service paid to renewable energy.”
She argues that to improve energy security for households, notably those dependent on wood or coal that cause pollution, solutions could include increasing the free basic energy allowance. She suggests: “Providing solar water heaters — the government has dragged its heels and wasted money in storage costs for solar water heaters rather than rolling them out; increasing renewable energy power generators, whether community-owned, privately or Eskom-owned, together with storage such as batteries, to provide more electricity; and the rollout of microgrids.”
Many homes have no ceilings and insulation and, Mcdaid says, if the government invested in improving poor households’ physical structures to make them energy efficient, then the burden of heating and cooling households would not be the burden of the most vulnerable households.
‘Gas as a transition fuel is probably not a good argument in 2021. It might have been 20 years ago’