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eThekwini Energy Strategy 2008 - Download here >>>

The Energy Strategy is the Energy Office’s most important document and acts as plan of action for all Energy Office projects.

 

Theme A: Residential Sector. This includes projects that address standards for residential homes as well as investigation of innovation tariff structures. It also includes uptake of solar water heating which is a major project of the energy office as well as the promotion of energy efficiency in homes.
Theme B: Local Authority & Public Sector. This theme involves introducing methods of understanding the Municipality’s own energy demands and usage and covers projects that aim to reduce the energy demand placed by the functioning of the Municipality. Buildings energy efficiency is a major project within this theme.
Theme C: Industry, Commerce and Agribusiness. Theme C commits the Energy Office to ensuring that this sector also plays a role in maximising energy efficiency but also covers interventions whereby the sustainable energy economy becomes more productive in the broader Durban economy. The KwaZulu-Natal Sustainable Energy Forum (KSEF) is an important project within this theme as it creates a networking platform for sustainable energy stakeholders in the city.   
Theme D: Transport. The final theme involves sustainable use of energy for transport and covers research projects into the uptake of more sustainable transport means. One main example of this is the electric bike pilot project that the Energy Office has worked together with the eThekwini Transport Authority on.

 

The immediate objective of this report is to provide eThekwini Municipality decision makers and officials with the proper technical guidance on the potentials of today’s renewable energy (RE) technologies as well as guidelines for implementation.

 

The development objective is to ensure that the eThekwini Energy Strategy will include the development and the implementation of these RE technologies.

 

The project was to provide “…a Catalogue of the sources of RE which are fit for eThekwini” and also to “…focus on the technical and financial aspects only.

 

This is the first State of Energy Report prepared for eThekwini Municipality. It represents the city’s first attempt to aggregate multi-sector energy statistics alongside analyses of key energy issues within a single, consolidated document.

 

The content of this report in part builds upon work already carried out by eThekwini Municipality in the areas of Greenhouse gas inventory development and State of Environment reporting. It further derives impetus from recent work embodied within eThekwini Municipality’s Climatic Future for Durban, which identifies the Climate Change-related challenges which lie ahead for the city and delivers appropriate responses to address those challenges. One of the main objectives of this report was to provide a foundation, both in quantitative and qualitative terms, for the development of the Energy Strategy for the Municipality.

 

The current energy supply constraints in South Africa are having significant impacts on local economic and social development. It is therefore critical for national and local government begin to create enabling environments for alternative energy production.

 

This is articulated in the Integrated Resource Plan for South Africa, which has outlined a diverse energy mix for the country going forward. Significantly, the IRP has proposed a considerable allocation to wind generation in the expansion of the electricity supply in the country over the next 20 years.

 

One of the key constraints that local municipalities face in facilitating the production of alternate energy is the lack of reliable resource data. For example, the Western Cape has traditionally been seen as the most viable region in the country for large scale will production. However, there have been no recent detailed studies on wind profiles in the KwaZulu-Natal region and it is therefore difficult for private sector developers to understand the potential for wind production in the region.

The eThekwini Municipality therefore elected to develop a Wind Map for the entire eThekwini Municipal Area. The wind map revealed that the EMA has favourable wind power generation potential with many areas recording wind speeds of over 6.2 m/s, which is sufficient for wind farm applications.

 

Furthermore, the study singled out ten specific sites within the study area and recommended that these sites are investigated further for the application of 20MW wind farms. The outlook is also favourable for smaller scale wind power production to power both homes and businesses and industries.