State of Energy in South African Cities 2006; Setting a Baseline

This provides a detailed review of energy supply and consumption in cities in South Africa – focusing on 15 cities and towns, including the six largest metropolitan centres, industrial towns, inland, coastal and “more rural” towns. The book’s contents are structured around chapters on energy and inclusive cities, productive cities, mobile and accessible cities, sustainable cities and well-governed cities. In each, the key issues are outlined, the main problems identified and some potential solutions put forward. For intance, in the chapter on inclusive cities, it notes that 16 per cent of households within the 15 urban centres do not have access to clean, safe, affordable and reliable energy; in one of the case study urban centres, 58 per cent of households lacked such provision. It also discusses the proportion of households in which energy costs take a disproportionate share of total income, and the scale of fuel-related illness, accidents and fatalities – for instance, from indoor air pollution, household fires and deaths from burns. The chapter on productive cities discusses energy efficiency within industries and cities and the potential for increasing provision from renewable resources. The chapter on accessible cities considers the modes of transport used by differnent income groups and the (very high) levels of transport-related deaths. The chapter on sustainable cities includes details of carbon emissions by sector, city types (industrial and non-industrial) and by city. What is notable is how high carbon dioxide emissions per person can be for industrial cities – much higher than in the more prosperous metropolitan areas. The chapter on well-governed cities assesses local government performance on energy issues, including their carbon emissions. There is also a chapter that explores how to shift energy profiles to a more sustainable basis, and a conclusions chapter outlining a needed energy research agenda, the priority to meeting the energy needs of low-income groups, the links with good energy policy and local economic development, and the importance of shifting to greater energy efficency and less carbon intensvie forms of energy. Annexes include energy data sheets for each of the 15 cities, and tables comparing energy statistics between the different cities.