Every evening national power alert messages flash on to television screens across the country. If the alert is green, South Africans are in luck, and there is no imminent threat of being plunged into darkness. If it’s red or orange, we are expected to turn off non-essential appliances, including stoves, kettles and lights, in a bid to prevent power failures.
Yet residential energy consumption only accounts for 16,4% of final energy demand, according to the Energy Efficiency Strategy of South Africa. By contrast the industrial sector accounts for a much larger 47% of consumption. What, then, is big business doing to battle energy efficiency problems, particularly energy-intensive industries such as mining and pulp and paper manufacturing?
This year the Mail & Guardian introduces a new category, energy and carbon management, to the Greening the Future Awards. The award, sponsored by Eskom, will recognise companies and organisations demonstrating pioneering efforts in energy management that include energy conservation, use of renewable energy and the pursuit of low carbon activities.
Big business’s formal participation in energy efficiency is relatively new. But it was significantly bolstered by the signing of the Energy Efficiency Accord, an agreement to meet national energy efficiency targets between big business and the department of minerals and energy, in 2005.
The National Business Initiative (NBI), the regional partner of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, acts as a facilitator between government and the large energy intensive industries on energy efficiency strategy. Last year, 37 companies pledged their involvement in the scheme, including AngloÂÂÂGold Ashanti, Eskom and Nedbank.
The NBI project manager of energy and climate, Tsvetana Mateva, is positive about the demand-side management programme.
”It’s been a year and a half and a good deal of energy has gone into companies crystallising their energy efficiency strategies and making them part of corporate strategy,” she says. ”Once you’ve created your strategy, you know where you want to go.”
A major way for large industries to increase their energy efficiency is with assistance from Eskom. Eskom’s demand-side management programme is an example of how the national electricity supplier is helping large entities, whether they are companies or municipalities, become more energy efficient. Demand-side management lets Eskom control how and when consumers use electricity. The programme is tackled from two angles, the first being load management, the second an increase in the use of energy-efficient equipment and improved industrial processes.
”An example of a load-management scheme would be to have the pumping systems in a mine changed to off-peak times, as opposed to all day,” says Andrew Etzinger, Eskom’s general manager of investment strategy.
This will decrease the demand on the national power grid during peak times in the morning and the evening. An example of the use of energy efficiency equipment is to overhaul a mine’s underground lighting system using technology designed to conserve power, says Etzinger.
”The technologies associated with load management are cheaper because they usually consist of some form of control mechanism to change the time of day at which electricity is consumed. In certain applications this could consist of a simple timer,” he says. ”Energy efficiency technologies involve producing the same ‘output’ for less electrical input, and are usually far more complex and costly.”
Eskom has set up a demand-side management fund of R500-million a year to help promote energy efficiency, says Etzinger. Projects that will save at least 500kW of power can be proposed to Eskom, who will then help fund the project. It funds 100% of the cost of load-management projects and 50% of the cost of energy efficiency projects because of the expense involved. Applicants can be diverse, says Etzinger, and include commercial businesses, municipalities and farmers.
AngloGold Ashanti is one participant in the initiative.
”AngloGold Ashanti has had much success in shifting tens of megawatts out of the peak period by implementing funded projects,” says Iain Menzies, AngloGold Ashanti’s head of engineering in the South African region. He adds that these typically include storing water in dams during peak periods and pumping it to the surface of a mine during off-peak times.
Energy efficiency projects include using energy-efficient lights such as compact fluorescent lights. Such projects can also involve regulating the use of compressed air on a mine to minimise energy consumption, says Menzies. This is done with the aid of computer-based control systems that operate control valves underground and on the surface of a mine.
”Some older technologies on energy efficiency have become part of life, and we tend to forget that these, too, still contribute to this end,” says Menzies. He points out that energy saving can be as simple as using heat generated from a mine’s operations to warm the water used in shaft change houses and mine hostels.
Big paper manufacturer Sappi has also realised the value of conserving energy, says Andre Oberholzer, group head of corporate affairs. His organisation has begun identifying and implementing energy efficiency and emission-reduction projects throughout the business.
Two examples of these projects are in KwaZulu-Natal, at the Sappi Saiccor Amakhulu expansion project and the Sappi Tugela Mill. The Tugela Mill project will decrease greenhouse gas emissions by converting one of the mill’s old boilers from coal to biomass.
”The biomass to be used is almost all the bark that is currently sent to the landfill site nearby,” says Oberholzer. ”By burning the bark, Tugela Mill will replace a significant portion of the fossil fuel [coal] that is currently burnt.
”Under the Kyoto Protocol, the emissions from bark are considered a net reduction of fossil fuel greenhouse gases, thereby qualifying for registration as a clean development mechanism (CDM) project under the rules of the protocol,” he says.
Under the Kyoto Protocol, a CDM allows industrialised countries with emissions-reduction targets to get involved in activities that reduce emissions in developing countries in return for certified emission reductions. This helps them meet their emission-reduction commitments.
”This means that Sappi, through this project, will be among the first companies in Africa to be in a position to receive and trade in carbon credits,” says Oberholzer.
The Amakhulu project will increase its electrical energy generation by 70%, simultaneously reducing coal consumption by 20%. It will do this through the ”recovery of dissolved wood solids for the generation of steam power.
”This means the project will increase energy efficiency through the greater use of renewable resources, and will significantly reduce its reliance on fossil fuels,” says Oberholzer.
