South Africans need no persuasion to accept innovative, cost effective solutions for providing power to the people. While political power is complicating life and distracting politicians from the reason they exist, a group of parliamentarians dedicated to giving real power to the people, have formed themselves into a Renewable Energy lobby group called eREACT ( e parliament Renewable Energy Activists). The first major outcome of this group is a private members bill on Feed In Tariffs, sponsored by the group's convener, Dr Ruth Rabinowitz (IFP). 

"In its current form, Feed In Tariffs began in Germany. They have had a huge impact on the uptake of renewable energy in countries where they have been implemented. The idea was widely advocated by the World Futures Council to members of parliament from around the world at a hearing in Amboseli in Kenya, which I attended", says Rabinowitz.  NERSA has proposed the concept for three years and has even drafted guidelines for it. Fellow members of parliament, Gareth Morgan DA, Lance Greyling ID and Judy Chalmers ANC are also strongly supportive of the mechanism. 

Essentially it entails the energy utility (in our case Eskom) ensuring private providers of Renewable Energy a fixed tariff to feed energy into the grid for a fixed period of time. It fosters entrepreneurship, creates jobs, offers certainty to the industry, encourages provision of energy other than conventional coal fired for rural areas and helps clean up the environment.  

"Finance Minister, Trevor Manuel has stated that he is not convinced of the economic case for large scale Renewable Energy projects in South Africa. The focus remains on nuclear and coal fired power stations. Yet there is convincing evidence that we have the world's best site for generating a solar thermal power plant right here in the Northern Cape. Solar heating should be routine and solar photovoltaic incentivised, along with many other forms of alternative energy such as geothermal, biomass and biodiesel," says Rabinowitz.  

"Currently there is no integrated vision or strategy to fast track development of a Renewable Energy industry in our country although we have a plentiful supply of free solar energy for most of the year. Hopefully our introducing this Bill will be a wake up call to Ministers who should be driving the Renewables program, to which they largely pay lip service. The recently adopted Energy Bill made scant mention of Renewable Energy, without targets or clarity on where responsibility for it would rest. With the best climate in the world, we lag far behind Europe and the UK, which has recently adopted FIT legislation. 

The 2003 White Paper on Renewable Energy set a target of 10 000 GWh hours by 2013. Currently we produce 53.8GWh from Biofuels and 148.2 GWH from other sources, a far cry from the recommended target in spite of our Cabinet approved Climate Mitigation Strategy." 

According to Gareth Morgan (DA) the greatest barrier to the establishment of Concentrated Solar Thermal Power (CSTP) in South Africa seems to be the cost of the technology. This manifests itself in the price of electricity generated from it. "CSTP technology is projected to experience cost reductions along a learning curve with cumulative global deployment, and the price of electricity in South Africa is projected to rise as a result of the national electricity crisis.

Electricity generated from CSTP becomes competitive with South Africa's average electricity price after 2020- 2025, and is already competitive with South Africa's peaking electricity price today," says Morgan. 

According to a recent Oxford Masters thesis by Max Edkins electricity generated by today's CSTP technology, supported with carbon trading and Tradable Renewable Energy Certificates (TRECS) financing, is competitive with peak and intermediate-load electricity prices from newly built fossil-fuelled power plants, as well as with existent and new diesel-fuelled Open Cycle Gas Turbines, such as the Mossel Bay, Acacia, Atlantis, and Port Rex ones, some of which are run up to 8 hours a day or more. Today's CSTP technology could also generate electricity at cost lower than what Eskom is offering to pay Independent Power Producers between 06h00 and 20h00 under their Pilot National Co-generation Programme. 

"Encouraging CSTP would also contribute to South Africa's target of reversing its carbon emissions growth by 2020-2025. International climate change financing can be encouraged in developing the technology of CSTP, and South Africa can and should aim to gain from the renewable energy, in particular CSTP, investments being seen today. Such investments will increase massively in the future." says Mr Morgan. 

"We have been enthusiastically supported by people in SANERI, NERSA industry and a host of energy think tanks and NGO's. Now all that remains is to keep up the momentum and get this bill passed in parliament. We hope that the Minister of Minerals and Energy will be one of our backers," concluded Rabinowitz.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:
Dr Ruth Rabinowitz M.P(MB BCh) 

JHB: Tel: 011 802 1826  
       Fax: 011 804 4221 
C.T: Tel: 021 403 3061  
       Fax: 021 403 3334  

Cell: 082 579 3698