Sustainability Of Domestic Electricity Distribution For Rural Areas In China And South Africa

Access to energy is a prerequisite for sustainable development and for fighting poverty. Availability of affordable and sustainable energy is critical to achievement of the Millennium Development goals. One of the key issues for sustainable development is access to the essential services for improved quality of life for the majority of people.Energy is a basic need. Energy resources assist humans in meeting daily needs-in pumping, transporting and heating water, in cooking food, in keeping warm or cool, in promoting good health, in transportation, in enhancing opportunities to become educated and in striving for improved security. Energy also assists people in achieving, at the very least, a minimal level of economic and social development. Poor households tend to spend a relatively higher proportion of their household income on energy services than do households with more resources. Many poor people live in rural areas where it is difficult to access modern energy forms and thus rely on traditional fuels such as wood and agricultural and animal wastes. Often, collection and use of various types of these fuels have devastating environmental impact. And often, house-holds are not able to afford to consume the amounts of energy needed by modest income-generating activities.'Energy poverty' is not restricted to households in rural areas. Even in built-up urban centers it is not uncommon to find households, without access to grid (of- grid) electricity services, that are using coal and other' dirty' and relatively expensive fuels to satisfy basic energy needs. A challenge to developing country governments is to implement measures that meaningfully increase poor people's access to modern energy forms such as electricity, paraffin, diesel and liquid petroleum gas(LPG) (Davidson& Sokona,2001, Redwood-Sawerr,2002).The low consumption by newly connected dwellings in the remote areas of China and South Africa poses the biggest threat to the viability or sustainability of electrification programmer.This thesis focuses on electricity distribution for the rural poor and remote areas of South Africa and China in a sustainable manner. It describes the electricity distribution situation that many households in remote/rural areas find themselves in, and outlines current governmental and other stakeholder initiatives towards improving access, availability and affordability to electricity to remote/poor areas in China and South Africa.An estimated 1.64 billion people world wide lack access to electricity, of which approximately 80% live in rural areas of South Asia and Sub-Saharan (IEA2002a) Non -access to electricity and rural poverty are closely correlated. This is because not only is electricity a pre-requisite for ameliorating living standards, it is also an important input for productive and economic activities, for vulnerable rural populations, the positive impacts of electricity inputs for basic activities such as pumping water for drinking and irrigation, lighting for extending working and learning hours, and powering small-scale rural industry are considerably greater due to a bundling of socio-economic benefits. For example, reduced lab our time for obtaining electrically pumped and hygienic drinking water may potentially free up time for income generation activities by women (Cecelski 2000), which may in turn be aided by electricity inputs. Many governments have succeeded in bringing modern energy services to most of their populations. Such countries as diverse as Costa Rica and China have achieved household electrification rates over 80 percent. Approximately 66% of all South Africa households currently have access to electricity. Over 80% of urban household and about 46%of rural households are connected to the national grid.The focus of this thesis is to meet the electricity needs of the rural households in South Africa and China in a meaningful and sustainable manner.The electricity is one of the most important commodities in the life of modern societies. The electricity markets is subject to many different risks both technical and economic, if electricity is considered as a commodity, it means its pricing depends on the demand and supply side which will result in the equilibrium price that has to be affordable to the people.In many less developed countries the performance of electric power utilities supplying remote and rural areas has decreased gradually in spite of the provision of external financial support. Moreover the benefits and progress of a considerable number of rural electrification projects has fallen short of expectations, financially and managerially (Zomers2001).A demand driven bottom up approach to rural electrification poses an alternative route to reach the rural poor, focusing, on improved income generation through the productive use of affordable electricity. The electrification scheme should be bases on a socio-economic analysis what revenue can be generated from the new grid and what capital and maintenance costs the operator can bear on a sustained basic, including subsidies and development assistance. Rural Electrification can be considered sustainable if capital and the use of electricity by rural household are non-decreasing.