pic: rogiroIn a move thus far unprecedented in local municipal policy development, Swellendam Municipality has issued a tender calling for professional services to help them develop a Sustainable Energy Strategy.

This is a very significant step because until now, this kind of work has only been done in South Africa at national, provincial and large city level.

Swellendam, located as it is in the Western Cape, is going to find itself, in company with many other similar municipalities, needing to reduce its energy consumption by 15% while finding a renewable source for 15% of what it does use, if the White Paper produced last year by the Provincial Government of the Western Cape becomes law.

In addressing this issue, Swellendam has decided to take a detailed look at its current consumption, across various sectors: residential, commercial industrial and municipal in order to gather the information necessary to inform the development of an energy strategyfor the coming years.

human traffic: pic - Shopping FindsIs it just me, or is anyone else out there just a little bothered by the messages coming out of the 'First World' at the moment?

It seems that after years of making very nice profits selling people stuff that they may or may not need, retailers are now feeling the pinch resulting from the global financial crisis.

So now the message to consumers, which used to be about not getting too deep into debt and that over-consumption leads to inflation etc, has now completely gone away, and various governments are now urging the consumer to spend! spend! spend!

Surely at a time of climate crisis the last policy we should be pushing is rampant consumerism.

Is ever growing consumerism the only way we can keep our economies going? If so, then it is definitely time for a change.

I am unashamed about the fact that I really want an electric car. Not only that but I really really want everyone else to have one.
Most people seem to think that an electric car is going to be slow (it isn't), have a short range (it doesn't have to), and is anyway just not worth thinking about (it is).
To be honest, when you start to think about it, the astonishing thing is that we are not all driving them already.
In our cities and towns we are all busy choking on the fumes of the internal combustion engine and putting up with the noise of all the vehicles around us when we could be brething clean air and living in the quiet.
Just think about the advantages:

• Electric Vehicles (EVs) produce no emissions
• An electric motor is far more efficient than an internal combustion engine
• EVs are quiet
  

I recently attended the launch of the PGWC (Provincial Government of the Western Cape) White Paper on Sustainable Energy. Having bemoaned the lack of government activity in this area for many years, it at last seems as if the ship is moving. It is kind of slow, and pretty cumbersome and doesn't have much popular support (I was one of three attending the launch), but at least it is something.
The paper has 3 main goals for 2014: the first is that the province sources 15% of its energy from renewable sources (based on 2006 figures). The second is that there will be an energy demand reduction of 15% (based on 2006 figures). The third is that carbon emissions should be reduced by 10% (based on 2000 emission levels). A special target is that "people living in informal settlements and RDP houses should have a 30% reduced energy poverty measured as access to and costs of energy services by 2014".
This is good, worthy stuff, and I am behind it all the way. But the document does raise a few

pic: Thomas RocheIf a private members bill being put before parliament very soon is successful, it will provide for the establishment of a feed-in tariff in South Africa.

A feed-in tariff allows people who are producing electricity (of an approved standard) from renewable sources to feed it into the grid and be paid for it. The bill suggests a tariff fixed for 15 to 25 years which may be up to 4 or 5 times the standard tariff.

This policy was adopted in Germany in law in 2003 and if you were to go there you could see the change the policy has made. It is hard to find a roof without a solar panel on it. This is because all of a sudden the economics of purchasing a solar panel change dramatically in its favour because you can guarantee a pay back on the cost of the installation. This means that businesses and private people can easily make a financial case for the installation and can easily get a loan for it.