Energy Efficiency

I have been following the discussions on elctricity with a keen interest. As the discussions on energy availability, cost and the vision 2030 progress, energy focus has mainly been on supply. However, with the high electricity bills we have been receiving we realize that people don’t want barrels of oil or kilowatt-hours of electricity per se; they want the services that energy ultimately provides, such as hot showers, cold beer(na soda pia), comfortable buildings, light, torque and mobility at affordable cost. Focusing on these desired services, delivered by the end-use application of energy, allows consideration of a broader range of options than simply the energy supplied by the national grid. Considered from the demand as well as the supply side of the equation, what is the cheapest, cleanest way to deliver each of these services?

With the emergence of smatter technologies, we need to find better, more cost-effective way of achieving this and thus using less energy more productively. Efficient end-use can thus compete with new supply as an energy resource.

Kenya needs to harness market forces and use widely demonstrated synergistic design, technology and management techniques to deliver the high quality of life available in Western economies at much lower financial and environmental cost. We need to shift focus from the idea of selling bulk electricity as a cheap commodity. Electricity generating companies (Independent Power Producers) together with KPLC should find ways of cutting customers’ bills rather than ways of selling them more energy. In this way, we will be able to gain from competitive generation in a way that does not sacrifice the lager benefits of efficient end use. Power producers need to compete based on how best they help customers gain more from each kilowatt-hour.

I believe with current technological advancements we can find applicable efficiency improvements that will cost even less than the cost of operating a thermal power station, even of its construction. Efficient use becomes even more powerful when synergistically combined with decentralized, modular electricity production at a scale of kilowatts and megawatts, renewable resources in particular, and local energy storage.

Apart from energy saving and reduced comodity cost, enduse effeciency could result in very quality service delivery. For instance, a good percentage of labor productivity gains in efficient buildings—due to their superior visual, acoustic and thermal comfort—are typically worth much more than the energy savings themselves. It is from this understanding that I have a feeling that the reduction in taxes might not be the perfect solution to High Electricity bills.

What do you think??