Electronic Theses and Dissertations (PhDs)

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10539/38008

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Subject: search.filters.subject.SDG-7: Affordable and clean energy

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Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    The Wind Energy Potential of South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province in a Changing Climate
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024-10) Landwehr, Gregory Brent; Engelbrecht, Francois; Lennard, Chris
    Due to the abundance of wind and solar renewable energy resources across South Africa, and the comparative low cost of installation and operation of wind and solar energy infrastructure, it is inevitable that the country’s dependence on fossil fuels for energy will decline in the future. At a practical level, developing wind energy facilities entails a complex array of activities and the ~20-30 year life spans of such facilities intrinsically implies that they will experience climate change. However, insufficient research and related modelling have been undertaken in South Africa to quantify future variability and systematic changes in the wind resource as it relates to specific synoptic weather types and wind energy production. The aim of this thesis is to develop methodologies to understand the synoptic drivers of regional wind energy production potential and in turn assess how and why South Africa’s wind energy production potential may change as a function of changing circulation patterns in a changing climate. The wind energy potential of the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa is quantified using energy yield analysis techniques. These results are mapped onto commonly occurring synoptic types for the region to assign an energy potential to each. When the changing frequency of these synoptic weather types is calculated in a climate change impacted future using Global Climate Models, it is possible to quantify the change in wind energy potential in the long term. Results show that the synoptic-circulation pattern with the highest wind energy potential is the Atlantic Ocean ridging High with its centre at about 30 °S, behind a northward displaced mid-latitude cyclone. Global Climate Model projections of the frequency occurrence of these high energy synoptic states show a decrease in frequency at all global warming temperature thresholds and in turn a decrease in wind energy production. The likely cause of this being the poleward expansion of the descending limb of the Hadley circulation which shifts these synoptic systems southwards. The methodologies presented in this thesis provide South Africa with the necessary climate change risk assessment and mitigation capability to address these impacts on the wind energy sector in South Africa.
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    From Coal to Renewable Energy: Perspectives on South Africa's Energy Transition for a Sustainable Future.
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Sebele, Temperance; Simatele, Mulala Danny
    South Africa has been experiencing an unstable electricity supply for years, leading to periods of load shedding from 2007 up to the present date. The electricity shortages have been attributed to distinct reasons, ranging from inefficient coal supply, skills shortages, sabotage by employees and lack of maintenance for nearly sixteen years. In addition to the electricity supply shortages, coal-fired electricity generation is responsible for roughly 80 per cent of South Africa’s total greenhouse gas emissions due to fossil fuel dependence, leading to many health, climate, and environmental challenges. To address the challenges related to fossil fuel dependency, moving to Renewable Energy sources that are climate and environmentally friendly is a necessity. The aim of this study was to investigate the optimal approaches that South Africa can embark on for a successful transition from coal to renewables. The institutional, policy, and strategic frameworks that exist within which South Africa can embark on for a successful transition were explored. Furthermore, the study sought to identify the challenges, and opportunities that exist or hinder the transition in South Africa. Lastly, the study explored how developments in the international policy frameworks influence South Africa’s ambitions to transition to renewables. The study is best suited to the pragmatism approach, and data were collected through the reviewing of literature, key-informant interviews, and questionnaires. A mixed-methods strategy that involved gathering both qualitative and quantitative data was employed and primary and secondary sources of data were used. The primary data sources used included key informants from various private and public institutions with an interest in South Africa’s energy matters such as ESKOM, SANEDI, SANEA, SAREC, SAPVIA, SAWEA, SAIPPA and NECSA. The non-probability sampling method was used in the participants’ selection from the sampled study institutions, with a combination of judgmental, snowballing and convenience sampling procedures employed at distinct phases of the research. Data collected was analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively, with interviews text data transcribed and analysed through manual tabulation and thematic analysis, and presented in graphs generated from Microsoft Excel, and the data from questionnaires analysed through the IBM Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software. The study revealed that the government played mainly four leading roles in the energy transition, which were providing financial support, legislative direction, institutional direction, and project oversight. Financial support is provided through financing projects and setting up financing policies that promote renewable energy investment, and legislative direction is provided through policy development and ensuring efficient implementation. Providing institutional direction is ensured through ensuring coordination across all spheres of government and capacitating institutions involved in the transition, and project oversight is provided through setting out renewable energy capacity determinations. The study further identified key energy transition elements, namely infrastructure, governance, legislation, stakeholders’ perceptions, and skills and strategies for a successful transition, which included channelling adequate financial resources to the renewable energy sector, privatisation of the electricity utility, diversification, rolling out bid windows, improving the legislative framework, improving grid access and integration, skills development, localisation of RE components manufacturing, providing incentives, and increasing consumer awareness about renewables. Several barriers to the transition were also identified, which included political interference and corruption, lack of financial investment, policies/legislation inadequacy, inconsistency in rolling out bidding windows, ESKOM’s monopoly, high cost of renewables, deficiency of incentives, skills and technology, labour unions, and deficiency of awareness on alternatives. The study recommends multisector reskilling of employees, since not all employees in the coal value chain may be interested in or able to be absorbed in the Renewable Energy sector. Furthermore, the government should fund and support progressive technologies and business models, improve the quality of institutions through merit-based appointments and uprooting corruption, privatisation of ESKOM to create opportunities for new entrants in the electricity market and improve stakeholder engagement and community support programmes. The UNFCCC must develop and ensure the implementation of enforcement strategies for holding countries accountable for their climate commitments for the transition to be realised
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    Integration of Sustainable Development Principles and Climate Change Adaptation Measures in Energy Optimization in Gold Mining in South Africa
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-08) Nadunga, Irene; Simatele, Mulala Danny
    South Africa located in the sub-Saharan African region and being a mining-intense country, is reported to be affected by extreme weather events which are increasing the country’s vulnerability to climate change impacts and therefore reducing the chances of achieving sustainable development. In light of this, mining companies are being pressured to make strong commitments towards implementation of sustainable development principles for sustainable mining. This study therefore aimed at investigating how sustainable development principles and climate change adaptation measures are interlinked and structured; and embedded in a gold mining company’s policies and strategies, in an effort to build the mining operations’ adaptive capacity and resilience against the impacts of climate change and achieve energy optimization. The challenges that can potentially prevent the effective integration of the sustainability principles and adaptation measures were also explored. Using a case study approach, this study was centered on the gold mining operations located within the Witwatersrand Basin of South Africa. Research data was collected from multiple sources, therefore employing a mixed method approach by applying the concurrent triangulation technique. Different analytical tools of policy, content and inductive data analysis, and descriptive statistical data analysis were applied. The empirical evidence shows that the gold mining operations are faced with increasing operating costs associated with the increased energy consumption and implementation of costly mining practices in an effort to combat the impacts of extreme weather events caused by climate change. This affirms that a relationship exists between climate change and energy use in gold mining. In an effort to address climate related risks and energy security, gold mining operations are implementing energy efficiency measures and using renewable energy in their energy mix; which measures are seen to integrate sustainability principles, therefore adopted as sustainability adaptation measures. In addition, some mining company policies and strategies are also seen to integrate sustainability principles and adaptation measures, in an effort to guide the mining operations in effectively developing and implementing sustainability adaptation measures, designed to holistically address climate related risks and energy security. This affirms that a relationship exists between sustainable development principles, climate change adaptation measures and energy optimization. This therefore, implies that sustainability principles and adaptation measures can be integrated to form sustainability adaptation measures, and that gold mining companies have the potential to achieve sustainable mining and contribute to sustainable development, particularly achieving SDG 7 and SDG 13.
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    Responsible mining and sustainability in Nigeria: the case of Bitumen
    (2020) Akinyosoye, Oluwole Olafusi; Wafer, Alex
    The last few decades have been marked by a sense of urgency regarding the sustainable use of the earth’s natural resources. During this period, the mining and minerals industries have received particular attention in relation to their perceived destructive impact on the environment. Within this context, the discourse of responsible mining has relatively recently emerged as a possible route towards more sustainable mineral exploitation that could be the basis for sustainable development in the future. For some commentators the idea of responsible mining is an oxymoron: mineral exploitation is always environmentally too costly. For other commentators, effective management of mineral resources provides a realistic path to sustainable development for resource rich but economically poor nations. One of the key components of responsible mining is "good governance": i.e. the presence of a broadly legitimate and democratic form of governing society, which includes a balance of power in the administration of a country between the effective institutions of state and civil society. However, the past decades have suggested that there is an inherent crisis of poor governance in many developing countries, which has been identified as one of the drivers of change to initiate sustainable development. This research report offers an exploration of these two intersecting concepts of responsible mining and governance in Nigeria, in the context of the proposed economic diversification strategy through non-oil and solid minerals development. The study focusses on what might be termed the paradox of sustainable futures in Nigeria: with the proposed exploitation of bitumen reserves in a country that has a poor social and environmental reputation for oil mining. What are the prospects that bitumen could provide resources for sustainable growth in Nigeria? Despite relatively high rates of growth in the Nigerian economy in the past few years, the Nigerian economy has traditionally been overly dependent on oil and gas extraction, and the gradual decline over the past two decades has seen an overall decline in development in the country. As a result, the government has identified other resource potentials, in this context, to exploit the vast bitumen reserves in Nigeria. Whilst the idea to mine bitumen spawns the rhetoric of development in the area and huge revenues to the government for national development purposes, there is a need to explore the paradox of development from this form of mining. More importantly is the impending impact on the indigenous people, which is influenced by certain factors, especially the network of governance, to address the challenges of minerals development in Nigeria. In this context, this study is an attempt to explore the possibilities of and anxieties regarding sustainable futures in the context of the impending bitumen exploitation. The study involved 3 months of field research in Agbabu in Ondo State, Nigeria, one of the areas that will be most affected by the proposed bitumen mining. The area is largely rural, with traditional forms of land ownership and farming practices that are integral to the economic opportunities within the community. Thus, to obtain detailed knowledge of the dynamics of exploiting bitumen, this study applied a qualitative research design to conduct a case-study research on Agbabu in Ondo state, Nigeria. The review of relevant literature, focus group discussion, in-depth interviews, and key informant interviews were relevant tools that provided the data for the study. With these tools, the study gathered data from a range of respondents which included the local population, government officials and professionals who hold esteemed positions in this study concerning their experiences and opinions’ on the proposed bitumen project. The study found that despite the welcome idea of bitumen development, local mining communities still struggle with issues of being marginalised and excluded from decision-making processes in matters related to their indigenous space.