Tanesco's clean energy strategy feature at Climate Conference

A number of nations worldwide are taking part in the United Nations Conference on Climate Change which is commonly referred as ‘Conference of Parties’ (COP27), to dissect over member countries’ commitment agreed on the previous edition (COP26) held in Scotland.
The apex of the conference over climate change is annually convened with Africa now hosting it’s fifth in the global event taking place in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, from November 6th to 18th.
At the previous COP, 194 national governments that were signatories of the Paris Agreement of 2015 accorded a few actions to amortize global warming including, but not limited to financing the least developed nations,  Africa included, to contain disruptive effects of climate change.
The countries that are members are those that ratified the Framework Convention Agreement on Climate Change of the United Nations (UN) since 1992.
COP meetings have continued to produce mixed results, with developing nations upping the stake in negotiations as their economies suffer most the consequences of climate change.
The likes of US, China, Germany and UK, the world’s largest contributors of global emissions have come under specifically targeted pressure to contribute more to the goal of taming global warming.
The said conference is staged to achieve three goals; including reducing carbon emissions, helping member countries prepare and adapt to climate change and accessing technical and financing assistance from the developed markets.
Tanzania is one of the partner countries of the conference and will during this COP27 in Egypt be hosting special events to market the country’s huge investment potential in areas of climate change mitigation and adoption. The government for the very first time will have a special pavillion where the country will engage investors and showcase its potential and contribution to the global efforts to protect the environment.
Tanesco Managing Director, Maharage Chande has shared with The Citizen that the firm has planned to harness the potential mitigation by setting up renewable energy investments fron which to generate clean energy for domestic use and for export, including to the Southern Africa Power Pool (SAPP).
“The SADC region has a serious shortage of electricity. It currently has a deficit of 6,000 megawatts and it is expected that for the next ten years the deficit will still exist.
There is also a need for power transmission lines from Tanzania to the pool, through Nakonde to Kasama Zambia,” says the managing director.
The COP27 meeting is expected to gather different investors, innovative companies, policy makers and international banks who will also be looking for investment opportunities and how to develop methods to invest in sustainable power that can be an opportunity for the country and the organization.
“Tanzania is blessed with enough sun, wind, geothermal, rivers and water as opportunities for investors, because these resources can generate 8,400MW for export” says Chande.
He says that by doing so, Tanzania can generate foreign currency for the country and help Tanesco become self sufficient in its operations.
“Guided by our leaders, we have invited this audience to the conference where we will display the existing projects in Tanzania, especially the renewable electricity and its transmission lines to the SAPP,” said Chande.
He says that currently the cost of connecting electricity to Tanzania is on average 50 percent which is less than the actual cost, and the cost of using that power is 33 percent, less than its actual cost of generation, transmission and distribution.
In that sense, he says there is still a big gap. The director says that Tanesco has currently supported about 4 million houses.
Tanzania has about 12 million houses, if Tanesco connects 6 million houses to power, which is 50 percent of all houses, it will need Sh1 trillion every year to cover the cost gap resulting from the charges of power connection and usage below the actual level.
However, he reveals that the firm has various plans and strategies underway to deal with this situation. One of those strategies is to quickly install renewable and gas power plants for exporting excess power to the South and East African markets.
It will be remembered that the SADC countries established a common electricity market (Southern Africa Power Pool - SAPP), though it doesn’t spare the country from the power shortage.
It currently has a deficit of 6,000 Megawatts and it is expected that for the next ten years the deficit will stand.
There are power transmission lines from Tanzania to that regional power pool, via Nakonde to Kasama, Zambia.

Stakeholders’ views
Speaking to the Citizen at different times, stakeholders are optimists that the COP27 can instill new hope for investors to come and invest in renewable energy that supports environmental protection.
They view that the country’s multiple energy sources will lead to reliable and cheap access to the service.
According to them, Tanzania’s overdependence on hydropower as the major single source for the country’s power, will result in unreliable power during drought spells.
The Director of the Climate Action Network Tanzania Institute, Dr. Sixbert Mwanga substantiates that many studies show that Tanzania has a large amount of clean energy that meets the needs of its citizens.
Despite hydro being the common energy source for the country, he sees renewable energy as another alternative and important source that will facilitate enough power generation which will be available at a cheap price while meeting the needs of the country.
“The available alternative energies are plentiful and off-grid, they can feed the grid to compensate others who are deficient in power.
For example, in Makambako there is enough wind, you don’t need to wait for the national grid to get electricity. You can generate and feed Makambako itself while you are looking for funds to send power to the grid,” he says.
Dr. Mwanga, says the move to use grid power to distribute it in various areas in the country, costs the Government a lot of money to connect various systems including cables.
“The government has been losing a lot of money just by expanding the network, the funds that would have been used to invest in power generation according to the source of the area and after having ensured its complacency, then we look out for ways to feed excess energy into the grid to gauge whether it is helpful to others or not if it is put in high voltage,” he says.
He emphasizes his argument by giving an example of what happened in the Kigoma region: that in reality the national grid is the one that followed the region, where huge costs have been incurred to achieve that.
He also says that the situation would be the opposite, if renewable energy sources in the region were used to generate electricity and start distributing it to the residents of the area, then the surplus should be fed into the grid for the use of others.
“Kigoma has big rivers like Malagalasi, it has the sun and other things, electricity could be generated through those sources for the use of the people of the region, instead of waiting for the grid to be connected to them,” he says.
He recommends that each region generate electricity according to the locally available sources.
“If we do this, we bring on something called energy democracy, but waiting for the national grid presents the cruciating risk of more power loss because it is something out of our hand,” he says.
On to the next one, Dr Mwanga advises the Government to allow individuals who are capable of generating more power than their actual demand, to sell it to others or the firm.
“The challenge we have is that if you generate your electricity at home to meet the needs, doors for feeding surplus of the power into the grid are locked, and that issue remains a debate,” he says.
He then wishes for an ideal system in place that will enable those who generate electricity at home to be allowed to sell the surplus to other people or the Government.
“We can increase the electricity speed and there are many people who are unable to run this because they have suffered losses after Tanesco failed to take excess power,” he says.
Taxes and fees imposed on renewable energy generating equipment is another obstacle that prevents the nation from obtaining the certainty of that energy, he notes.
“On batteries and other electricity storage devices, the tax is high and the Government does not provide subsidies, with the exception of Tanesco, so that the grid continues to expand.
In order to achieve the use of renewable energy power, he asks the Government to revisit taxes especially for electricity generating equipment.
The argument over the use of alternative sources to generate power is underpinned by a Forestry Expert from Sokoine University (SUA), Professor Romanus Ishengoma who says that it is difficult to have reliable electricity if the authorities do not have many sources.
“We can have resilient energy. Most of our power comes from water, when water level decreases, the production also goes down, let’s look for multiple sources,” he suggests.
Gas energy is another source mentioned by Professor Ishengoma as the answer to the challenge of frequent power outages.
“Don’t get carried away by big dams’ power, there are other small sources that can be used instead to generate electricity. Renewable energy is another area we should turn to,” he says.
Such assertion is supported by the Chief Executive of Safi Power, Fred Mallya who says that the power challenge is not only in Tanzania, but other countries have decided to deal with it.
“Kibiwa is the source of electricity in itself, we used fuels for many years, having spotted its implications on the environment, then we immediately stopped and resorted to water,” he says.
Along with the use of water, he says it is important to turn to other sources that will enable access to reliable electrical energy.
He mentions some of those sources as the sun, explaining that in Tanzania the energy is available in abundance but it has not yet been properly tapped to generate solar power. Wind is another important source that should be used to produce energy because it is another ups-for-grab energy in the country, according to him.
“If you go to Same, Singida and other places with a rift valley, there is a lot of wind but it is yet to be used for power generation,” he says.
He emphasizes that the use of multiple sources of energy increases the power if the main source is overloaded for some reasons.