Western Cape Premier Alan Winde announced on Tuesday that over the current Medium Term Expenditure Framework, the Department of the Premier is ploughing R103.4-million into a response to the energy crisis in the province.

Winde was delivering the 2024 Premier budget vote, where he noted that the Western Cape and the country were still plagued by the energy crisis.

The Department of the Premier’s main budget for the 2024/25 financial year is R2.008-billion.

Winde pointed out that 15 years of relentless loadshedding had severely hampered the country’s growth potential.

He said since the start of loadshedding the Western Cape province has lost between R49-billion and R61-billion in real gross domestic product and counting.

He noted that his province was tackling the crisis with the urgency it deserved, going beyond its mandate to add more megawatts to the province’s power system.

The Western Cape Energy Resilience Programme is focused on a demand side management programme, to support municipalities by designing and implementing demand side management measures at scale, and communication campaigns to help the public understand how and why they need to save electricity.

The programme also focuses on promoting the use of energy efficient products and services by government, citizens and businesses, and will pilot a load management system to assist in managing power use during peak hours.

Winde explained that 96 000 emergency loadshedding relief packs will be provided to indigent households, with the next phase of this initiative focusing on school learners in quintiles 1 to 3.

He said around 4 000 packs have already been handed out to Western Cape Department of Social Development-funded facilities, such as gender-based violence shelters.

He highlighted that “municipal pooled buying” will be implemented to establish a market operator mechanism to enable municipalities to make an in-principle decision to warrant the formal establishment of a facility.

He said the facility would be aimed at reducing the risks and costs of renewable energy independent power producer (IPP) procurement.

Winde explained that the Western Cape Energy Resilience Programme would also focus on the development of a province-specific Integrated Resource Plan aimed at providing the evidence base to guide the provincial government and municipalities on strategic priorities, the optimal energy mix, targets, energy infrastructure development, potential private sector generation (wheeling) and potential and optimal price paths for different energy provision scenarios.

“In this regard, an international partner, United States Agency for International Development, has come on board to co-fund this initiative,” he said.

He highlighted that the province’s core energy team will be resourced to coordinate and manage all the initiatives of the Western Cape Energy Resilience Programme, including sourcing specialist skills.

MORE INTERVENTIONS TO INITIATE, UPSCALE

Compared with the 2023/24 adjusted budget, the overall budget decrease is 1.78%, which Winde said was mainly due to reduced allocations for broadband, given anticipated efficiencies from Broadband 2.0.

He noted that despite a constrained fiscal environment, the province was turning over every rand in the service of its citizens.

He said his department was investing in interventions that would be initiated or upscaled for greater impact, noting that the department would consolidate the Broadband 1.0 service and finalise procurement of the Broadband 2.0 service and transition between the contracts with minimal disruption to network services. 

The department connects and provides information and communications technology services to more than 28 000 corporate and health users as well as connectivity to close to 1.2-million learners in schools.

The department will develop a policy guideline and roadmap for the utilisation of artificial intelligence technologies in the Western Cape government, also strengthening its cybersecurity measures.

Winde noted that the department will consolidate and enhance the new digital experience platform to replace the current Western Cape Government Portal.

It will also expand and optimise the department’s cloud services; and continue to enable, implement and support digital transformation plan initiatives.