Il WEC Inside è una pubblicazione bimestrale del World Energy Council (WEC) contenente interviste a rappresentanti del WEC e dei Comitati Nazionali, overview e aggiornamenti sulle attività recenti e future del WEC in tutto il mondo e, approfondimenti sulle ultime news in ambito energetico. La versione integratele è disponibile nell'area Servizi Informativi, riservata ai soli Associati sul sito del WEC Italia.

1. WEC Inside
15–28 February 2014
Welcome to WEC Inside, your exclusive
briefing from your WEC network
News
African energy leaders gather for the annual Africa
Energy Indaba
The annual Africa Energy Indaba, the WEC’s
African regional event, is taking place this week
(18-20 February) in Johannesburg, South Africa.
“This year, the Africa Energy Indaba is taking
itself to the next level,” says Brian Statham, Chair
of the South African National Energy Association,
the WEC member committee which is coorganising the event. He added that the WEC’s
studies released at the World Energy Congress
“have been drawn through into the Energy Indaba
programme, and will be discussed as plenary sessions, within an African context.”
The event has a new addition this year – the
Indaba Energy Leaders’ Dialogue. The issues of
shale gas development in South Africa and the
Global Electricity Initiative (GEI) will be the two
main topics of discussion.
Christoph Frei, WEC Secretary General, commented: “The African energy sector has long been
working to widen energy access to unlock the vast
potential of this dynamic region, and this issue
remains a critical priority. New entrepreneurial
dynamics in renewable energy and potential
opportunities arising from South Africa’s shale gas
resources are the hot issues in the current context.
At our Indaba Energy Leaders’ Dialogue we will get
greater clarity on the future of these issues with the
most senior sector leaders.”
The WEC is also releasing its 2014 World Energy Issues Monitor at the Indaba (see Inside
Insight). Brian Statham will launch the report to all
delegates in the plenary today (18 February). This
will be followed by a media roundtable with Secretary General Christoph Frei and WEC Chair MarieJoséNadeau discussing the study’s findings and its
implications.
In its bid to support Africa’s energy leaders of
tomorrow, the Indaba is providing the WEC’s
Future Energy Leaders (FELs) with complimentary
access.
Liz Hart, Managing Director of Siyenza, which
co-organises the Indaba, said: “Most of the FELs
are coming from Africa and some from around the
world. The purpose of this investment is to grow
future energy leaders and we look forward to rich
engagement with [them].”
The WEC’s African regional meeting took place
yesterday (17 February) ahead of the Indaba.
WEC Inside will bring a full round-up of the week’s
event in the next issue. ■
News continued on page 2 ...
Interview
The Global Electricity Initiative will be holding talks with the
leaders of African utilities at the Indaba. Philippe Joubert,
Executive Chair, tells us the latest about the GEI.
What does the GEI aim to do in
Johannesburg?
What are GEI’s initial findings with
regards to electricity access?
Africa is an important region for the GEI. For Africa,
the problem has certainly been providing access to
electricity for all, and this becomes an even greater
challenge because the region is growing. Many parts
of Africa are also poor, so they are more vulnerable to
climate risk and extreme events than more developed
regions.
Africa also has an interesting situation in terms of
technology and market organisation. The GEI recognises that one of the most important challenges is to
bring electricity to remote locations with distributed
power or off-grid solutions.
The views of utilities have been consistent. They have
said that that it will be a challenge to achieve the
target of electricity for all by 2030 if the rules of the
game are not improved.
They have said that the challenge is not a problem
of funding, but rather of being enabled to reach those
people who are still without electricity, through providing off-grid and mini-grid solutions, or by connecting to
existing grid.
GEI wants to increase its coverage of Africa by
increasing the number of utilities taking part in the
project. The Indaba gathers top business leaders
and decision-makers in one place so offers a great
opportunity for us.
All the development banks, and even the private banking systems and independent power producers, have
access to funds. They do see electricity access as a
need, so normally they should be able to marry the
funding capacity and the need for financing the project. But we are in the unfortunate situation where we
have the funds, we have the projects, but the partner
can’t reach agreement on a satisfactory level of risk or
profit for the project. This is due to a variety of factors:
the perception of the country’s risk structure, the governance structure, reaching an acceptable level of
project risk, the size or location of the projects, among
others.
At the Indaba roundtable we will be communicating
the first findings of our global survey of utilities. We will
also seek to understand the views of African utilities
and energy players, and to hear about their best
practices and their recommendations to improve the
situation.
1
If there are funds, why aren’t they used?
Philippe Joubert is
Executive Chair of the
Global Electricity Initiative
You’ve said that climate mitigation is no
longer enough; rather we also need to
work on adaptation. What are utilities’ take
on this?
Utilities recognise that climate change is already a
reality because they see it more frequently in real life.
Extreme weather events are more frequent and more
powerful, and they affect infrastructure such as power
lines and power stations, while communities themselves are also devastated, as we saw in hurricane
Sandy and recently in the Philippines. This means that
the network should be transformed to become more
resistant, but also importantly – more resilient – to
these events. It’s not enough to be more resistant to the
events because the strength of the event is unknown.
You also need to organise the networks so that they
can come back quickly to their previous state of operation after the extreme event.
Utilities are investing not only in mitigation by decreasing emissions. They are also working on adaptation and resilience to increase the level of our energy
systems’ resistance and flexibility. ■
■ The Global Electricity Initiative discussions will take
place on 19 February. It is part of the Indaba Energy
Leaders’ Dialogue at the Africa Energy Indaba.
15–28 February 2014 WEC Inside