Challenges
21st Century Energy for the People
One of our most tragic public policy failures is Uganda’s energy poverty – caused by the inability to provide Ugandans with affordable, accessible, reliable energy. Without 21st century energy, our nation will remain poor. Adding to that tragedy is the careless waste of what little energy we purchase by obvious, avoidable inefficiencies in transportation, construction techniques, farming practices, buildings and homes.
Fewer than four million of our 34.5 million people in 2011 have access to electricity. Yet even these fortunate few experience frequent blackouts because we do not generate enough to meet routine needs. Adding insult to injury, we also pay one of the highest electrical rates in the region, 20 U.S. cents per unit versus 14 cents in Kenya and nine cents in Tanzania. Our energy-wasting transportation system relies on an increasing number of cars, trucks, and motorcycles imported from elsewhere that require expensive motor fuels and maintenance and create urban gridlock that impedes mobility.
19th Century Energy the Norm
The other 30.5 million Ugandans, virtually everyone who lives in rural areas, rely instead on 19th century energy technologies – primarily wood for cooking, heating and work. Other sources are kerosene lamps and wax candles for light. They also must rely on non-motorized transportation to get around or pay dearly for boda-boda or matatu hires.
This lack of modern energy is a crushing financial burden for most Ugandans that consumes scarce earnings better spent on education, health care or decent housing. It is an energy poverty that remains one of our most serious competitive disadvantages in the global economy.
False Solutions
There is nothing inevitable about this failure, only the usual mismanagement and false solutions by leaders who should know better. Faced with energy realities that are well understood throughout the world, our business and political leaders ignore them in the pursuit of false, failed solutions.
One false energy solution is our government’s campaign to create huge factory farms to raise sugarcane, corn, soybeans, or oil palm for biofuels. These not only replace productive forests and wetlands, they reduce food production, and deprive communities of their independence and livelihoods. Another false solution is government’s mismanagement of future oil revenues from the Lake Albert region that have sabotaged prospects for Ugandans to earn a fair share of profits or protect our environment from pollution.
Our most notable false solution is the government’s demand to build more huge, river-drowning hydroelectric dams to feed a national electrical grid cannot reach the over 85 percent of Ugandans dispersed in rural communities, the very people who most need modern energy.
The existing electrical power system has already failed to provide promised supplies because falling Lake Victoria outflows have cut generated power to less than half of what was promised. In fact, if the existing dams generated what was promised, there would be no shortages today.
Incompetent Management
Not only that, Uganda’s electric distribution monopoly, Umeme, in 2009 lost 35 percent of the electricity it bought to “technical” and “commercial” problems, according to the engineering firm Parsons Brinckerhoff Africa hired to study the problem. “Technical” losses are shoddy equipment and incompetent operations. “Commercial” losses are theft by customers or corrupt meter readers or billing staff, or management failures to bill and collect accurately. In developed nations, like Australia, all losses are about five percent, almost all of them technical; Uganda’s Umeme losses are seven times that rate of loss.
And the problem is getting worse. The 35 percent loss in 2009 was an increase from 31 percent lost in 2005. As the firm noted in its 2011 report, “The stakeholders initially underestimated the poor condition of the network and also underestimated the resilience of the Ugandan customer to resist paying for electricity.” The problem is worst in rural areas where, firm speculated, “it would appear there is a ‘culture’ of theft and non payment for electricity.”
Parsons Brinckerhoff Africa also found that officials “have no way of knowing or estimated [sic] the breakdown of non-technical losses.” Umeme loses 15 percent to technical problems because, a government regulator noted in 2009, “the distribution system is dilapidated and a safety risk” and “quality of supply is an issue.” Despite the serious technical problems on the Umeme system, “they still do not have 100% accurate information on their network.”
Coverup and Secret Deals
Upset by more frequent power outages in 2011, government leaders have demanded that Umeme must improve or lose its license as nation’s electricity distribution monopoly. However, the company is protected by terms of its 20-year agreement, still kept secret by the government. Leaked terms of the agreement, if accurate, state that taxpayers would have to pay Umeme an estimated US$1.1 billion to cancel its monopoly. Once again out of the public eye, our leaders agreed to a secret contract that leaves Uganda helpless, and their righteous indignation is a sham.
The existing generating system has already failed to provide promised supplies because decreased flows from Lake Victoria are not enough to generate what was promised; the lake lost three percent of its total volume from 2003 to 2006. Further, the huge fixed costs – US$1 billion for the Bujagali Dam, US$2.2 billion for the planned Karuma Dam – are a reckless gambling debt that future generations must pay.
Neglect of Geothermal and Solar
Instead of understanding these realities, our leaders neglect our most promising energy solutions and, in fact, are sabotaging our future ability to use them.
Three potential geothermal energy sources already identified could yield 450 MW – equal to the combined production of the Bujagali and Karuma dams – for a fraction of the over $3US billion total cost of those dams. But instead of accelerating geothermal development – at a cost of only $35US million – the government is stalling and studying.
Despite Uganda’s ideal location on the Equator for solar exposure, our government continues to ignore the great potential of this energy source. Even in electrified communities, solar thermal technology for home and institutional water heating can provide ample supplies at low costs. Solar ovens can reduce villagers’ need for wood fuels. Electricity produced by photovoltaic panels is well suited for remote areas.
Building one large solar farm using massed solar reflectors to direct intense heat to drive steam turbines could add 250 MW to the National grid at a cost of $US600 million to $US1 billion – the same output as the Bujugali Dam, without the environmental damage.
Yet government continues to deny adequate funding for solar energy projects.
Other Alternative Energy Solutions
Other neglected sources of alternative energy are combustible municipal or industrial wastes, co-generation of electricity using waste process heat, and mini-hydropower sites, of which over 60 have been identified.
For example, Kinyara Sugar in 2011 co-generated 12 MW from its Jinja sugar mill and had expansion underway to generate 30 MW. If it could sell its electricity to the grid for 10 cents per kwh, instead of the current 6.15 cents, Kinyara stated that it could generate at lest 50 MW. Compared to the cost of new large dams, this is a bargain for Uganda’s stressed consumers.
Energy Efficiency a Bargain
Then there is the most cost-effective source – energy efficiency.
Revitalizing Uganda’s once-strategic railroad system can yield great efficiencies in transporting goods and passengers using a fraction of the energy wasted by trucks and automobiles. Replacing bricks baked in backyard wood-fired kilns with soil-stabilized blocks requiring no firing would save huge volumes of firewood and mortar. Energy performance standards for new buildings would lock in operating savings for decades to come.
Intelligent urban planning and growth management would reduce energy-wasting sprawl development and produce more compact, efficient communities. Better seed varieties, use of bio-solids to fertilize crops, and improved farming practices would reduce the need for expensive chemicals with large energy inputs.
A competently managed electricity distribution system would reduce the 35 losses of electricity because of shabby equipment and massive theft to a world standard of five percent. Meeting that standard would increase the electricity reaching paying customers by nearly 50 percent, with no increase in generating capacity needed. Improved collection of electric bills would finance those improvements, for a net cost of zero.
That these are a bargain, compared to the government’s expansion plan, is shown in this Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development report in 2006. It stated that simply replacing one million light bulbs with energy saver bulbs, at a cost of US$2.5 million, would save 50MW of electricity, an output equal to a large thermal electricity generating plant (at a fraction of the cost).
Expanding co-generation projects that sell electricity to the grid would produce another 50MW, at a cost of US$108 million, also a fraction of the cost. Providing only 65,000 existing customers who use electricity to heat water with solar water heaters would save 46MW during peak hours, at a cost of US$91 million.
These are just a few of the energy efficiency improvements that government could complete if it had competence and political will, and NAPE will continue to advocate for an aggressive energy program of alternatives and efficiencies.
To read more about energy, click here for Library.
To read about NAPE’s action agenda, click here.
