Western Cape developing energy sustainability through renewables ahead of schedule

Western Cape Premier Alan Winde highlighted on Wednesday that South Africa still faces an energy crisis. Although loadshedding (scheduled rotating power cuts) has stopped, the country is still dependent on an ageing fleet of coal-fired power stations, he pointed out, while delivering the opening address for the Solar & Storage Live Cape Town 2025 conference and exhibition, being held at the Cape Town International Convention Centre. “My theme is – never, ever, waste a crisis!” he asserted, citing the example of Cape Town’s Day Zero water crisis, when, during the 2017-18 drought, the city came within 14 days, he reported, of completely running out of water. It didn’t, because Cape Townians changed their behaviour. Before the crisis, the city, then with a population of 4-million people, had used 1.2-billion litres of water a day (l/d). Today, with a population for 5-million (25% larger), the city used 800-million l/d of water.