06 Mar 2022

Worldwide interest in renewable energy has grown, and the commitment on the use of renewables has increased drastically in recent years.

Giving a keynote address at the 4th Southern African Solar Thermal Training and Demonstration Initiative workshop in Gaborone on Thursday, senior energy engineer in the Ministry of Water Resources,

Green Technology and Energy Security, Ms Mukani Thapelo said increasing the use of renewables was a key solution to promotion of sustainable development and energy security.

She said Botswana ratified the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1994, and the Kyoto Protocol in 2003, adding that the country also adopted the Paris Agreement in 2015, which came into force in 2016.

She said the objective of the 4th policy workshop was to bring together government, key players from the solar industry and industry associations to discuss funding opportunities and mobilise financial resources.

Ms Thapelo said the country’s solar thermal roadmap aims at identifying primary actions and tasks that must be taken to accelerate residential, institutional and industrial solar thermal technology development as well as deployment nationwide.

She said the roadmap and implementation plan focus on applications of thermal technology in key areas of immediate attention to Botswana, namely domestic and public sector applications as well as commercial and industrial applications.

She said while government had planned for increased electricity production to meet demand, there was global concern of expanding access to energy services to meet the Millennium Development Goals while protecting the environment.

She further said such was especially pertinent at this time when the atmosphere was currently suffering from an ever rising concentration of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Ms Thapelo said the balance between the global demands for cleaner energy in the interest of humankind provided a key point in the development and deployment of solar thermal systems, as solar resource was abundant.

She said government had been proactive in the energy efficiency and renewable energy areas, and in 2018 the Water Resources, Green Technology and Energy Security with technical assistance from the World Bank developed instruments to guide the development of the National Renewable Energy Efficiency Strategy.

“It is through such assistance that we believe we will achieve our sustainable energy for all Action Agenda target of generating 15 per cent of our electricity requirements from renewable sources by 2030,” Ms Thapelo said.

She said the contribution of renewables to the energy mix remained low with solar contributing approximately 2.4 per cent, adding that one of the major challenges had been slow implementation due to capacity constraints and lack of funding.

She said another one of the contributing factors were poor workmanship, substandard solar equipment leading to low confidence in imported solar products. ENDS