The City of Cape Town (CoCT) is working on diversifying its energy resources to significantly reduce its reliance on struggling State-owned power utility Eskom in the next two years and, thereby, the impact of loadshedding on its customers.

The municipality intends to end loadshedding for customers and offer more affordable, cleaner energy, and is on track to become a shining light of energy diversification in Africa, says CoCT Energy MMC Councillor Beverley van Reenen.

CoCT has been running substantial energy efficiency initiatives for more than a decade, she highlights.

“Apart from retrofitting our own operations to reduce energy use and save ratepayers money, we have also had a long-running customer energy efficiency communication and awareness campaign, which has successfully made Cape Town one of the most energy efficient metros in South Africa.

“The Mayoral Energy Priority Programme seeks to fast-track investment and enhance the ease of doing business, while looking to innovative solution-driven partnerships to diversify the energy mix and position Cape Town as the leader in alternative energy investment.”

Through this programme, the municipality intends to achieve its net-zero carbon municipal buildings commitment by 2030, and encourage and enable the private sector to lead by example or to follow suit.

At least 30 MW of renewable generation capacity needs to be developed with a minimum reduction in energy use of 18%, compared with a 2020 baseline, to realise a carbon neutral municipal building portfolio by 2030.

To achieve this, CoCT is pursuing an energy efficiency programme and renewable-energy generation through rooftop and ground-mounted photovoltaic (PV) installations.

The municipality received additional Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) for 22 municipal buildings this year, including its Observatory Metro Police Academy, after becoming the first South African municipality to receive EPCs for three municipal buildings in September last year.

Government gazetted regulations in December 2021 for all government buildings of more than 1 000 m2, and all privately owned buildings larger than 2 000 m2 within specific occupancy classes, to publicly display an EPC within two years.

“Our EPC compliance initiative is one of the City's important steps towards achieving the net-zero carbon municipal buildings target by 2030, and the broader city-wide ambition to be carbon neutral by 2050. The Observatory Metro Academy showcases how our targets can be achieved – the building is highly energy efficient and received a B-grade rating, performing 200% better than the national benchmark,” said Van Reenen in a July press release.

CoCT took another step towards achieving its 2030 goal in August, when it signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the C40 City Finance Facility (CFF), a joint project of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group and German development agency Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit.

CFF has agreed to provide technical assistance to help the municipality’s Energy Directorate develop a proposed renewable-energy generation project aimed at designing, building, operating and maintaining a utility-scale, ground-mounted solar PV generation plant on a site under investigation in Paardevlei, outside Somerset West.

CFF’s technical assistance will include the appointment of a senior project adviser to support the project team and its efforts to undertake a technical feasibility study and capacity strengthening in the fields of project development and the structuring of solar PV projects, said Van Reenen in an August press release.

The CFF MoU follows the donation of technical assistance valued at R5.9-million by global development institution the International Finance Corporation in February to aid projects driven by CoCT’s Sustainable Energy Markets Department.

These projects include energy efficiency in municipal buildings and/or facilities; electricity supply, including buying renewable energy; a climate investment opportunities assessment; and a green pricing approach.

Financial Incentives

Last month, CoCT introduced a third-party aggregator incentive programme to reduce demand during loadshedding.

The municipality issued a tender, which outlines a 60 MW demand response target, and Van Reenen believes this, together with CoCT’s other energy management initiatives, will be key to ensure that customers are protected from the higher stages of loadshedding.

The third-party aggregators appointed through the tender will sign up voluntary “power heroes”, comprising residential and small-scale commercial customers, who will agree to nonessential electrical equipment being switched off remotely through installed smart devices to reduce energy demand when necessary.

“The tender is, however, dependent on market response and input,” says Van Reenen.

CoCT’s “power heroes” initiative is in addition to the City’s long-running small-scale embedded generation programme which credits customers for excess electricity generation fed into the network.

In July this year, an expansion to this programme was announced where commercial customers will be permitted to sell more electricity than they use.

“In the past, generating customers were required to be net consumers of the city’s energy; [starting with commercial customers] they will now be incentivised to become net producers,” says CoCT Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis in a statement.

CoCT’s energy efficiency and management initiatives are proving to be effective, and the municipality continues to ensure that “we enhance our efforts”, concludes Van Reenen.