WEC Inside 

   

15–28 February 2014 

Welcome to WEC Inside, your exclusive briefing from your WEC network

News 

The annual Africa Energy Indaba, the WEC’s African regional event, is taking place this week (18-20 February) in Johannesburg, South Africa.

“This year, the Africa Energy Indaba is taking itself to the next level,” says Brian Statham, Chair of the South African National Energy Association, the WEC member committee which is co-organising the event. He added that the WEC’s studies released at the World Energy Congress “have been drawn through into the Energy Indaba programme, and will be discussed as plenary ses-sions, within an African context.”

The event has a new addition this year – the Indaba Energy Leaders’ Dialogue. The issues of shale gas development in South Africa and the Global Electricity Initiative (GEI) will be the two main topics of discussion.

Christoph Frei, WEC Secretary General, com-mented: “The African energy sector has long been working to widen energy access to unlock the vast potential of this dynamic region, and this issue remains a critical priority. New entrepreneurial dynamics in renewable energy and potential

African energy leaders gather for the annual Africa Energy Indaba

opportunities arising from South Africa’s shale gas resources are the hot issues in the current context. At our Indaba Energy Leaders’ Dialogue we will get greater clarity on the future of these issues with the most senior sector leaders.”

The WEC is also releasing its 2014 World En-ergy Issues Monitor at the Indaba (see Inside Insight). Brian Statham will launch the report to all delegates in the plenary today (18 February). This will be followed by a media roundtable with Secre-tary General Christoph Frei and WEC Chair Marie-JoséNadeau discussing the study’s findings and its implications.

In its bid to support Africa’s energy leaders of tomorrow, the Indaba is providing the WEC’s Future Energy Leaders (FELs) with complimentary access.

Liz Hart, Managing Director of Siyenza, which co-organises the Indaba, said: “Most of the FELs are coming from Africa and some from around the world. The purpose of this investment is to grow future energy leaders and we look forward to rich engagement with [them].”

15–28 February 2014 WEC Inside 1

What does the GEI aim to do in Johannesburg? Africa is an important region for the GEI. For Africa,

the problem has certainly been providing access to

electricity for all, and this becomes an even greater

challenge because the region is growing. Many parts

of Africa are also poor, so they are more vulnerable to

climate risk and extreme events than more developed

regions.

Africa also has an interesting situation in terms of

technology and market organisation. The GEI recog-

nises that one of the most important challenges is to

bring electricity to remote locations with distributed

power or off-grid solutions.

GEI wants to increase its coverage of Africa by increasing the number of utilities taking part in the project. The Indaba gathers top business leaders and decision-makers in one place so offers a great opportunity for us.

At the Indaba roundtable we will be communicating

the first findings of our global survey of utilities. We will

also seek to understand the views of African utilities

and energy players, and to hear about their best

practices and their recommendations to improve the

situation.

Interview 

What are GEI’s initial findings with regards to electricity access? The views of utilities have been consistent. They have

said that that it will be a challenge to achieve the

target of electricity for all by 2030 if the rules of the

game are not improved.

They have said that the challenge is not a problem

of funding, but rather of being enabled to reach those

people who are still without electricity, through provid-

ing off-grid and mini-grid solutions, or by connecting to

existing grid.

If there are funds, why aren’t they used?

All the development banks, and even the private bank-

ing systems and independent power producers, have

access to funds. They do see electricity access as a

need, so normally they should be able to marry the

funding capacity and the need for financing the pro-

ject. But we are in the unfortunate situation where we

have the funds, we have the projects, but the partner

can’t reach agreement on a satisfactory level of risk or

profit for the project. This is due to a variety of factors:

the perception of the country’s risk structure, the gov-

ernance structure, reaching an acceptable level of

project risk, the size or location of the projects, among

others.

You’ve said that climate mitigation is no longer enough; rather we also need to work on adaptation. What are utilities’ take on this? Utilities recognise that climate change is already a

reality because they see it more frequently in real life.

Extreme weather events are more frequent and more

powerful, and they affect infrastructure such as power

lines and power stations, while communities them-

selves are also devastated, as we saw in hurricane

Sandy and recently in the Philippines. This means that

the network should be transformed to become more

resistant, but also importantly – more resilient – to

these events. It’s not enough to be more resistant to the

events because the strength of the event is unknown.

You also need to organise the networks so that they

can come back quickly to their previous state of opera-

tion after the extreme event.

Utilities are investing not only in mitigation by de-

creasing emissions. They are also working on adapta-

tion and resilience to increase the level of our energy

systems’ resistance and flexibility. ■

■ The Global Electricity Initiative discussions will take

place on 19 February. It is part of the Indaba Energy

Leaders’ Dialogue at the Africa Energy Indaba.

The Global Electricity Initiative will be holding talks with the leaders of African utilities at the Indaba. Philippe Joubert, Executive Chair, tells us the latest about the GEI.

News continued on page 2 ...

The WEC’s African regional meeting took place yesterday (17 February) ahead of the Indaba. WEC Inside will bring a full round-up of the week’s event in the next issue. ■

Philippe Joubert is Executive Chair of the Global Electricity Initiative