Load-shedding can drive you mad, can’t it? Plus it costs the economy billions.
But every blackout has a silver lining. You are probably too angry or frustrated to hear that right now, because you can’t cook dinner, the Wi-Fi is off, your office has come to a standstill and there is no ice for your whisky.
So here is the silver lining: load shedding means a big reduction in our carbon emissions. That is something to celebrate for South Africans who have one of the highest per capita carbon emissions in the world. Okay, I know many will say *%#^ carbon emissions! I just want the power back on! However, if you think about the damage carbon emissions are doing, changing the planet’s climate that has been a stable backdrop we depend on since civilization began, you must concede that this is a bit of a positive spin-off. True, we could get the same job done of reducing our carbon emissions by going all out for renewable energy, but that is another story. One of the big hassles about load-shedding is being without Internet, which brings me to something startling I read last week about emails. According to research done by a UK energy company OVO, sending a single email creates one gram of carbon emissions. What made my jaw drop is that 64 million “unnecessary” emails sent in Britain every day account for an astonishing 23, 475 tons of carbon emissions a year. Top of the company’s list of “unnecessary” emails are the millions that say nothing but “thank you” in response to an email received. Polite maybe, but the company says that if Brits cut back on just one of these “thank you” emails a day, they would reduce their carbon footprint by 16,433 tons a year. This translates into 81 000 flights from the UK to Madrid. The Guardian interviewed Mike Berners-Lee, a UK researcher and writer, who apparently advised OVO on their research. It quotes him saying: “When you are typing, your computer is using electricity. When you press send, it goes through the network and it takes electricity to run the network. And it’s going to end up being stored in the cloud somewhere and those data centres are burning through huge amounts of electricity. We don’t think about it because we can’t see smoke coming out of our computers, but the carbon footprint of IT is huge and it’s growing.” Another point: Why on earth is the government not allowing the wind energy sector to sell all its available electricity to Eskom? The SA Wind Energy Association said this week wind farms had another 500 MW of electricity available immediately – but some strange rule says wind farms can sell only so much to Eskom and no more. Why, too, does government not immediately fast track the wind sector? There are masses of companies just waiting for the government nod to get going. If load shedding can make you mad, the poor management and lack of vision in our coal-dominated, inefficient electricity sector can make you weep.
