We are in an interrugnam, as Marxists would say. We are stuck in a nineteenth- or twentieth- century-type economic model that sits in the way of doing things in South Africa. This model contrasts with a twenty-first century technology shift and an alternative way of thinking about modern economies.

The nineteenth- or twentieth-century model can be best described as bulky, heavily bureaucratised and dirty. It is characterised by large-scale power infrastructure and is dominated by energy-guzzling heavy industry. Such a model is not sufficiently export- orientated outside the mining and heavy metals, chemicals and fabrication sectors.

In a twenty-first-century model, there is greater focus on nimbleness, reducing bulkiness, optimising mechanisms for the delivery of goods and services, and optimising energy use. Further, there is strong emphasis on those types of exports where the quality of knowledge and the ability to move up the innovation value chain are more pivotal than the quantity of exports. In a sense, this model is all about looking for a clean, efficient and sufficiently diversified economy that is as labour-intensive and skilled as possible. Here, the transformation of energy as a key component of a vibrant economy is not about the nature of the energy mix or how much power must be supplied for how much demand but rather how nonbedded and embedded energy work together. The shift must be towards developing an energy architecture that does not prioritise a model based on supply but rather energy services and the quality of access it can offer to a variety of consumers.

Can we create an economy that uses less for more? We need to facilitate economic activities that will give us that. Can we build an energy supply and use system that encou- rages innovations in energy service models that are clean, timely, cost-effective and within reach of the customer? Can we create forms of economic activity in which the embedded energy and carbon units used are reduced through better technology, improvements in the quality of labour and optimisation of material use? We should measure all these in firms, households and the country as a whole.

This twenty-first-century economic model not only involves a shift in the electricity mix but should also be at the very core of the structure of our economy, the production methods we use, the awareness of the labour force of the new sustainability norms and the types of materials we use to produce the things we consume domestically and export. Many advanced countries see this as the future, as the trajectory of energy supply is moving from an era of abundance to scarcity – if we take a 50-year view on the economy. The cost of producing energy and ensuring access will go up, so economies have to deal with this in a much more comprehensive manner.
The debate in South Africa is limited, largely owing to the fact that we are stuck with the legacy of a single-utility model to meet all our needs. Such a model is a dead end and a diabolical trap, and we need to get out of it sooner rather than later. To change the model, we need to be much more innovative and creative in the energy services model we envisage for the future. It cannot just be long wires and large plants. More importantly, a twenty-first-century vision of a prospering and energy-thrifty economy is a more holistic and systemic one.

One should not just focus on security of supply but must have a better and firmer orientation towards seeing the energy challenge as a way to understand how energy is embodied within the entire economic system – from how it is generated to how it is consumed and interlocked with nonenergy systems. This will cause one to realise that there is a whole suite of technology waves on offer that can take us from wastefulness to optimisation.

Then the question arises as to how we can catalyse the modernisation of the production and consumption sides of the economy with new technologies and what the best way to take advantage of secondary effects would be: new types of investments, entrepreneurship, reskilling of the workforce and whether we can use the backbone of our own economy to create exports, both in the hardware and software that are an intrinsic part of these new techno-economic shifts.

In thinking of a twenty-first-century economy, think in terms of which of our current endowments will be diminished or exhausted and then back-cast and say which endowments have we not used and which ones we need to build through the development of new capital and endowments. Most future economic planning tends to build on what we have and not what will be absent from the equation and how that gap will be filled.

Finally, in doing this, you need all stakeholders to have a common purpose and some level of consensus on that twenty-first century vision. We will not disagree much on a 50-year horizon, but will disagree on the pace and manner of how we unlock ourselves from the existing trap we are in – the attachment to the nineteenth-/twentieth-century way of doing things.