Forget the federal government’s targets on clean energy, the South African city of Cape Town has set its own goals and is striving to become an “energy creator.” According to the city’s mayor, Petricia de Lille, the city cannot leave its energy security in the hands of Eskom.
Cape Town has set a target of sourcing 10%-20% of its energy needs from renewable sources by 2020.
"The City of Cape Town has taken a strategic decision to relook at our approach to energy and the very business model underpinning our electricity department. We have started work on a number of projects where we are creating a new model for energy-generation and distribution," de Lille said.
Cape Town has started to engage the federal government on building its own renewable energy plants, purchasing directly from IPPs, and bringing natural gas to the Western Cape. Another component to Cape Town’s energy-security program is the installation of more than 45,000 solar water heaters on roofs across the city.
“We are also the first city in South Africa with a feed-in tariff for households who are generating their own electricity through PV panels and want to feed excess electricity into the city’s grid,” de Lille said. It also has contracts with small-scale embedded electricity-generation contracts with a number of major industrial customers who are able to feed electricity into the city’s grid.
"We have also signed contracts with 43 residential customers who are able to feed into the city’s grid in a legal and responsible manner," de Lille said.